Le Chevalier
by Axia West
Summary: In the wake of the Tower's destruction, Cullen finds his home overrun with foreigners. And though they arrive under the banner of friendship, tensions run high. Determined to keep the peace, Cullen's vows are tested by an intriguing Orlesian mage. Cul/OFC
1. One

**Le Chevalier - One**

**Note**: This takes place some months after the end of _DA:O_ and so there will be spoilers. Please do not post this elsewhere. Bioware owns most of these characters, I own the rest.

I've made the leap that the Tower would be up and running, if badly, by the time the Archdemon is slain. I'm not sure yet how long this piece will be – it may decide it wants to be a full-length story or it might just be a bit of fluff. The main thing I wanted to do is give Cullen some depth and explore realistically how you would go about courting in such a strict, paranoid atmosphere. I know Cullen comes off as sort of a religious nutball, but I think that's appropriate at this stage. Please R&R if you can find the time!

*

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

-Carl Jung

*

Cullen thought of leaving. At least once a day, usually in the small hours just before sleep, he considered fleeing. Not that he had anywhere to go or any idea of what he would do, but it was just so tempting. Tempting. _Temptation_. Things that were tempting were to be avoided. Staunchly. _Religiously_. And so leaving - being just one of many temptations he had faced in his life - was out of the question.

Besides, Knight Commander Greagoir needed him. Cullen was the last of the original Templars, all that remained of the old guard, and if he too were to abandon the Tower, then the Knight-Commander would be practically swimming in Orlesians. Not that they weren't already up to their ears in foreigners, but Cullen knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his presence helped tip the balance in favor of Fereldans.

Which was why he hated – _loathed_ - these daily meetings in Greagoir's office. Surely there were more important things to do than dwell on their tentative majority? The meetings were always impossibly early - before morning prayer _and_ breakfast, putting them right around the five o'clock mark - and they only served to remind the newer Templars that Cullen was Different with a capital D. Cullen didn't want to be different. He wanted them all to be the same. Soldiers. Brothers. They wore the same uniform, served the same purpose… They were to stand as one united force against the mages, foreboding and faceless, a symbol of the Maker's divine protection. But that wasn't happening, because Knight-Commander Greagoir decided daily updates on their seemingly endless string of problems were necessary for… what? Certainly not morale. Self-flagellation, perhaps.

And so at five in the morning, Cullen stood freezing in his armor in Greagoir's stuffy office. The Knight-Commander was still in the process of replacing his tapestries and furniture. Everything that had been touched by demons or smeared with Templar blood was systematically burned and removed from the Tower. Better to suffer an empty office than perform your daily duties on a desk tainted with the blood of your fallen brothers. Greagoir's office resembled a closet more than anything else. Shelves, simple desk, brown, brown, brown everywhere… Sort of appropriate, Cullen mused, given the Templars' monastic lifestyle.

"Are you paying attention, Cullen?"

_No_.

"Of course, Commander."

"Good. As senior officer, I want you present for the meeting ceremony today," Greagoir continued, his quill scratching across the top of a letter. He rarely did just one thing at a time. Cullen stared at the top of his wiry gray head. "Irving feels it's time to bring on another senior mage. And I would have to agree. The balance between apprentices and teachers makes me… anxious. Too many little ones… Too many variables. Not enough discipline."

Cullen dreaded every mage that swelled their number, but Greagoir – and Irving – had a point. Senior mages were more powerful, yes, but they also had greater control over their skills. They had a calming effect on the apprentices and simply by being older and more mature, generally made a Templar's life easier. It was better to have multiple pairs of watchful eyes in the room, even if some of those eyes, regrettably, belonged to a mage. In general, senior mages shared a Templar's desire to rein in the apprentices and keep the peace.

"They'll be here by midmorning," Greagoir added, "I will be there, as will Irving and the other senior mages."

"Is that all, Commander?" Cullen asked, sensing it was not.

Greagoir stiffened behind his desk, putting down his quill. He looked up at Cullen finally, his eyes wrinkled at the edges, with worry perhaps, or fear. "They're Orlesians, Cullen. It's… I appreciate that our numbers were decimated and Irving is eager to pick up where he left off, but this seems… unwise."

"The First Enchanter arranged this?"

"No, this order comes from higher up, I'm afraid, from Denerim. Just… be _watchful_, please. The other Templars are green, they do not yet understand what it may… Well, what it may come to." Greagoir shifted his eyes down to his hands and then to the sword at Cullen's belt. Cullen clenched his teeth together. He would not punish himself by remembering the horrors the blood mages had unleashed. Not now. Not in front of Greagoir. He would not crack in front of the Knight-Commander. "It could be nothing," Greagoir said quietly, "Only two more mages. But one here and one there… You see what I mean, don't you? The Orlesians do things differently. Just be mindful of their behavior and report anything you deem suspicious."

Cullen gave a sharp bow from the waist. "I will, Knight-Commander, as my duty demands."

He turned to go, recognizing Greagoir's unspoken dismissal. His hand was on the door when Greagoir said, in a voice so quiet Cullen had to strain to hear, "You are not alone, Cullen. We are not alone. Irving is with us."

Cullen gave a nod by way of understanding and stepped out into the corridor. Irving. _Irving_. The blood in Cullen's veins threatened to boil. So what if Irving was with them? He had done fuck all – Maker forgive his temper – the last time the Tower erupted with demons. The Templars had been overrun, the mages corrupted and only the help of a Grey Warden set the Circle to rights again. As far as Cullen was concerned, First Enchanter Irving was about as trustworthy as a blunt sword. Sure, a blunt sword was still a weapon, but it in the end it was useless.

As Cullen stormed out and down the hall, the Templars stationed at intervals and doorways straightened at his approach. He couldn't help but grimace at this. How amusing that these boys showed him deference and respect, when not a year ago he was being bullied and harassed by the senior Templars. Other men might have taken pleasure in this reversal of fortunes – from bottom of the pile to the very tiptop – but it only served as a reminder of his brothers' gruesome downfall. It was far too high a price, and one Cullen wished he had never paid.

Cullen returned to the Templar dormitories, passing several senior mages in the hall. The apprentices were still abed at this hour, but some of the older mages liked to get an early start to organize lessons or meet with Irving. He also shouldered by a few Orlesian mages, two men and one woman and just a glimpse of that one woman was enough to speed his step. Whoever let these women get away with robes like that (Irving) should be throttled. Was there some kind of rule somewhere that said Orlesians not only had to speak funny but dress funny, too?

No, Cullen decided, because there was nothing funny about it. No man, especially no man who had taken strict vows, should be privy to that much cleavage that early in the morning. It was hardly breakfast time, but already he felt as if he were living in a brothel and not a place of study. _There are children here, for the Maker's sake. Put some clothes on_. If that's how they dressed during the day, he didn't even want to think about what they wore to bed. But of course he did, and felt his cheeks burn with shame as he ran the last few steps to the chapel.

_Nothing. I bet they wear nothing._

"Maker," he whispered, falling to his knees in the glow of candlelight. Through his grieves, his knees ached to be pressed against the unforgiving metal. He took that pain in stride, knowing he deserved it. He prayed, hard, surrounded by the familiar scents and sounds of the little chapel – the honeyed smell of beeswax, the warmth of the flames on his face, the slight echo to the arching stones. Other Templars had already come by to light their red candles and leave their sins and prayers for the Maker to sort out. Usually, Cullen didn't have anything to confess so early in the morning, but he whispered his unclean thoughts to the carved statue, his hands clasped tightly together, and asked for guidance and forgiveness, and the strength to endure these painted Orlesian women with unshakeable discipline.

"I've taken vows," he whispered to his fingertips, "Not just for my body, but for my soul."

Cullen thanked the Maker for His patience and stood, sighing with relief. As he left the chapel and wound through the halls toward the dining hall, he wondered – not for the first time – if he had been spared for a reason. The other Templars had fallen to their pride or hatred or lust, but Cullen had survived, determined to thwart the demons that tempted and teased him. Was it pure coincidence that he, who prayed more than the others, managed to come out the other side? It seemed prideful and wrong to assume that he was somehow better than the others, but what other conclusion could be drawn?

_No_, he corrected himself, _it was chance, only chance. A humble man would not place himself above others._

His heart and mind equally heavy, he entered the dining hall to a familiar tension. The Templars sat at one table, the Orlesians at another and the Fereldan mages at yet another. The air of "us against them against them" was palpable and suffocating, like the pungent stench from an infected and festering wound. Cullen, of course, took his place at the Templar table. His stomach growled, unsettled from having taken his lyrium without a crumb of food in his belly. A meager meal of fruits, soft cheese, gruel and herbal tea had been prepared. Mages, having taken no vows of purity, were allowed coffee and sugary things like jam and chestnut spread. The Orlesians had complained until a special cook was brought in from Val Royeaux. They ate things that smelled like the Golden City itself – piping hot and fragrant with steam. Cullen thought he smelled grilled onions, but forced his eyes down to his own plate. _Not five minutes out of the chapel and already you are coveting that which you cannot have._

He forked down his slices of melon and tried to justify a good mood. Weaker people needed sugar and coffee to be alert. Templars found strength through sacrifice. He didn't need a fancy meal to start his day. He fed off of the zealous fire of temperance and abstinence. Indulgences weakened the soul, creating appetites instead of stamping them out. Cullen smiled around his mug of tea. Yes, he was strong in the Maker, and it made him whole. The Maker may have turned away from His children, but Cullen would be the sort to prove humanity worthy of His light.

Finishing his toast, he glimpsed Irving walking among the tables. The First Enchanter was doing his best to bridge the noticeable gap between the Fereldan mages and the Orlesians. Not that it was working very well, but Cullen appreciated that he was trying. A rustling of armor and the slap of a tray informed Cullen that Bryce had joined him at table. Bryce was one of the new recruits, but seemed to have a good head on his shoulders… When that head wasn't spewing rubbish.

"Morning," Bryce said cheerfully, tearing into his bread. "Sleep well?"

"Very." Cullen never did. Bryce didn't need to know that. "And you?"

"Not at all," Bryce replied, his voice muddled with chewing. "It's so bloody drafty in here. I can't bloody well sleep if I'm just trying not to freeze to death."

_Don't snap at him. Be a positive influence._

"You may request blankets from the supply stores," Cullen replied evenly, "Or ask to have your room inspected for cracks."

"It's gonna take a lot more than blankets to knock the icicles of my nuts," Bryce muttered. He stirred a few dried apple pieces into his gruel. "_That_ might help though."

Cullen followed the man's gaze to the Orlesian table, where the pretty female mage Cullen had noticed earlier had sat down to eat. Her petite frame put her at an awkward angle with the table, and she was forced to sit up very straight and thrust her breasts out to keep from having to rest them on the table ledge. Cullen flushed and stared resolutely down at his bowl.

"Maker bless those robes," Bryce whispered dreamily.

Cullen flinched. "Trust me. He most certainly doesn't."

He elbowed Bryce under the armpit, a silent prompt that it wasn't polite to stare, nor was it becoming of a Templar. What were they teaching these recruits at the Chantry? Were they so desperate to garrison the Tower that they sent children? Cullen almost wished they could see a possession, just to strike home what they were dealing with, what they were _surrounded_ by. But then he chastised himself for even entertaining such a reckless idea. He wanted Bryce to rethink his faith, not die at the hands of a blood mage.

Irving drifted over to the Templar's table. He was the only mage bold enough to dare. His quiet smile made Cullen feel strange, sad, as if harboring a grudge against this tired old man was pointless and ungenerous. Irving had lost just as much, if not more, when the Tower fell. The Right of Annulment had nearly been invoked, and while Cullen still believed it should have been, he couldn't deny Irving was truly devoted to rebuilding the Circle. There had been no signs of demons since the Grey Wardens came. Perhaps this was a sign that Irving was the rightful First Enchanter after all.

"First Enchanter," Cullen said quietly, both greeting the man and raising a question.

"Yes, lad?" Irving asked, clasping his hands lightly in front of his robe. Bryce was suddenly most taken with his gruel, eyes trained on his spoon and not the mage hovering over them.

"Is there… Could you do something about…" How to explain? "_That_." Cullen nodded his head toward the pretty Orlesian girl. It took Irving a moment of silent contemplation to take Cullen's meaning. Bryce's head jerked up at this and he unleashed a furious glare on Cullen, willing to brave Irving's presence if it meant making his feelings known. The young Templar had gone red to the roots of his bright blonde hair. Clearly, Bryce did not share Cullen's concerns.

"Won't it distract the students?" Cullen hurried on. This was about maintaining order, and not anything else.

Irving's eyes sparkled with something like mischief. "Allow me to give you some advice, Cullen, and I hope it serves you well: Pick your battles."

"But, First Enchanter - "

"Please, my boy, by all means. Ask the Orlesians to change. If you have any luck, please let me know."

Irving drifted way, Cullen staring after him. Bryce sulked into his porridge. Cullen felt a coil of dread unwind in his gut. He was not looking forward to the rest of the day.

* * *

A tower. How quaint. And in the middle of a lake? Even quainter.

Lisette followed her master's trailing robes up the winding stares, grateful, at least, for the exercise. In all other ways she was decidedly ungrateful. The journey from her home, her _real_ Tower, had been nightmarish, plagued with bandits and inns that smelled of unnamable horrors. Did people really dress like this? _Eat_ like this? Didier had warned her it would be bad, strange, horrifically _foreign_. But nothing could have prepared her. Nothing. All the warning words in the world couldn't ready a soul for this kind of shock. She began to huff a little as the stairs continued, merciless, a never ending march upward. If only it _were_ never ending, then she wouldn't have to actually accept the fact that she was officially a transplant.

At last, the stairs stopped, evening out on a landing that overlooked the way they had come and the sprawling lake below. A pretty view… _for a visit_. She picked up the hem of her robe, determined not to tear one of the few things she still had from home. What if they forced her to wear Fereldan clothing? No, she decided, they would pry these robes from her cold dead fingers. Which they probably would, too, considering how brutish the men seemed. She hoped with all her aching heart the charm on her books would hold. It was taking all her concentration to keep them cloaked in her bag, invisible to the naked eye. She was growing dizzy from having to keep half of her brain focused on that task and the other half focused on not tripping up the stairs. If Didier noticed her constant casting, he said nothing.

"_Et voila_," Didier murmured as he stopped to catch his breath. "How are you feeling?" he asked in their native tongue. Lisette scowled.

"I'm feeling like I want to go home."

Didier laughed and then frowned, trying very hard to look serious. "This is home now, Lizzy. Do try to smile."

She would not. Or maybe just for him. He was like her books, something from the real Tower, the _better_ Tower. They could try to steal her books away but they wouldn't steal Didier. He was a senior mage, after all, someone to be respected and feared. Perhaps he could inject a bit of manners and style to this place. Lisette could tell just from the sober, gothic architecture it was going to be an abattoir of _blah_.

Two heavily armored men waited outside the doors. Templars. They had those too in Orlais, though the outfits were slightly different. These men certainly looked unhappy, or at least their helmets did. That was familiar, too. Didier swept a bow. The Templars were unmoving. _Pigs_.

"I am Didier Edgard," he said, straightening up, "The First Enchanter expects me."

This seemed to jolt the statue-men into action. They leaned over in unison and knocked on the door. There was a series of ominous whirs and clicking, no doubt the complicated locking mechanism. Lisette smiled. Also quaint. As if she couldn't slam down the doors with a simple spell. She weaved a little, weak and dizzy from keeping her books cloaked. Didier steadied her with one big, warm hand on her shoulder.

"Do you need to sit down?" he asked.

"No, no," Lisette touched her forehead, forcing a smile, "Just winded from the climb."

Didier nodded and escorted her inside. Unintentionally, and feeling like a mouse, Lisette hung back behind him. Her master was tall and broad, perhaps his back would hide her from the gazes of all these… strangers. This was probably not the way to make a good first impression, but Lisette was pretty sure these Fereldans had no manners to offend. And besides, they would all be staring at Didier anyway, since he was so magnetic and charming and powerful.

She heard voices, murmuring voices, the kind that implied rampant curiosity. She also heard a few familiar accents in the crowd. Orlesians! Her heart leapt at the sound. What music! Perhaps there would even be a few from her own Tower. This bolstered her heart and Lisette decided that she could stand straight and tall; she would not embarrass her countrymen.

"Monsieur Edgard," someone said, Lisette couldn't see him over Didier's shoulder. "You are most welcome."

"First Enchanter Irving, I presume?"

"Indeed. But… But where is your apprentice?"

Apprentice. Ha! Not for long. Didier was anxious to have Lisette undergo her Harrowing. She was ready. More than ready. Didier, the traitor, took a step to the side and ushered her forward. She could no longer rely on the red velvet barricade of his body. Lisette raised her chin and took a step into the shimmering yellow light of the overhead chandelier. Another round of murmurings. _Yes, that's right, get a good long look._

Lisette stifled a gasp. The First Enchanter was dressed like a homeless man. No, Lisette corrected herself, even homeless men knew not to wear such drab, unflattering colors. But she shook his hand anyway, because it was the right thing to do. At least he smelled alright, a bit like dried herbs, thyme perhaps. His face was lined and blotchy with age spots and his hair looked like it could use a good wash, but his hand was gentle and Lisette grudgingly admitted that he was kind of charming, if dim, in a doddering old grandpapa way.

"I've heard much about you," Irving said. That was kind of him. "Your master informs me that you are quite the prodigy. And you wish to undergo your Harrowing soon, I understand."

"_Oui_," Lisette said primly, "I mean y-yes." She blushed. _Fool_.

"Do not worry, my dear," Irving said, patting her hand. His fingers were very dry, like parchment. "It will take some time to adjust to your new home. But it will be a smooth adjustment, I hope."

"Lisette is my finest student," Didier said proudly, his chest expanding. Lisette looked around at the faces staring back. The strangers stood in a half-circle, senior mages and Templars in two rows. There were no apprentices present, but perhaps they were in class. Lisette kept her face very still, so as not to betray her fear or disgust. She could smell the Templars. They were sweating like hogs under their armor. The whole hall reeked of it. _Men_. Putrid. Her eyes drifted to one Templar in particular, a man in his early thirties with intriguing brown eyes. Strangely, he was not wearing the ugly bucket hat like the others. He looked as if he were about to vomit on his grieves, his face tinged green. Admittedly, he was the most handsome man she had seen since leaving Orlais – excluding Didier, of course, who was the finest looking man wherever he went. But that wasn't saying much, was it? Fereldans were a motley bunch. It was a bit like being the handsomest leaper in the colony. The Templar refused to meet her eye, instead staring wild-eyed at the wall over her shoulder. His hair was sort of nice, she decided, curly and golden, but probably smelly considering it was currently sweat-plastered to his neck.

And why did he look so ill?

Lisette felt suddenly exhausted. It had been a long journey and she was eager for a bath and a clean bed. She communicated as much to Didier in Orlesian when he was finished talking to someone called Knight-Commander Greagoir.

"No more Orlesian," Didier corrected her. And then in an undertone, "It's rude."

"Fine," Lisette replied stubbornly, "I'd like a bath, _please_."

Irving chuckled generously at this. Apparently her discomfort was terribly amusing. _Quelle surprise_. The First Enchanter gestured one of the Templars forward, the cute-sweaty-sick one. The Templar made an awkward, stiff little bow and when his head bobbed back up he only looked more unhinged. Lovely. Not one hour in this infernal place and someone was going to vomit on her. What overwhelming hospitality.

"Mademoiselle," Irving said, with a rather acceptable accent, "This is Cullen. One of our Templars."

_ Yes, thank you, I noticed that bit._

"How do you do?" Lisette replied, dropping a curtsey. Just a small one, since his precise rank was not given. If he were a true chevalier, Lisette would have dropped to the floor. Or tried to kiss him. Or dropped to the floor _and_ tried to kiss him. One of the three.

"I-I'm quite w-well," he stammered. _Oh really? You certainly don't look it_.

Lisette found this tremendously funny. Did anyone in the room really believe for a moment that he was okay? Somebody ought to take him to the infirmary. He looked paler than a Chantry initiate at a whore house. Didier touched her back, prodding her toward the domed archway ahead. Excellent. More stairs.

"Senior Enchanter Alice," Irving said suddenly, perhaps recognizing the Templar's unsteadiness. "Why don't you go with them?"

A tall, spindly mage emerged out of the crowd. She was Fereldan. How did Lisette know? The mousy hair and grubby robes were a dead giveaway. An Orlesian wouldn't allow themselves to be found strangled in a ditch in that outfit. Lisette repositioned her bag and threw one entreating glance over her shoulder at Didier. He smile warmly, encouragingly, and winked. The sweaty Templar, Colton or whatever, noticed this and swallowed noisily. _Mind your own business, tinhead_.

The Alice woman took the stairs much too quickly for Lisette's liking. Apparently they all bounced around like gazelles in this Tower. Even the Templar, wearing at least thirty pounds of gear, was light on his feet. Perhaps stair-climbing was a competitive sport here. It wouldn't have surprised her, since they didn't seem to play any proper games. Lisette followed them at her own pace, taking her time to tip her head back and soak in the architecture. Some of the stonework was impressive, even artful, but the walls were suspiciously barren of tapestries. Then she recalled that they had suffered an upheaval, and kept her opinions to herself.

Lisette said nothing as they walked, while Alice prattled on about what statue represented who and so forth and so on. Voices trickled down the hall, seemingly out of the walls. They walked by Templars as still as statues, their eyes hidden behind the glinting steel of their helms. Lisette wondered if they watched her, if they were adding her to some mental list. She found it odd that a Templar was escorting her. At the Verchiel Tower, their guards never spoke to mages unless it was to discipline them. The lines between Templar and mage were drawn even more severely. So she was understandably uncomfortable to have a Templar walking so close beside her, his shoulder easily in reach. Just having one near and so casually attired made her stomach clench with fear. An old wound on her back throbbed, but she pushed it out of her thoughts.

They brought her to a long, thin hall cluttered with bunk beds. Lisette wondered vaguely if these were the servants' quarters.

"Here we are," Alice said a little coldly. Apparently she didn't appreciate Lisette's complete silence. "There are plenty of empty bunks still. Feel free to choose one."

"I beg your pardon?" Lisette thought maybe her jaw would break from hitting the floor at such speed. The Templar shifted, his armor creaking. "This is…" She squinted skeptically at the Templar. "Is this your idea of a joke?"

"J-joke?" he paled, more so than before, if that was even possible.

"These are the apprentice dormitories," Alice informed her. One brown eyebrow twitched. "Did you… Are you not accustomed to bunks?"

Lisette stared around her, torn between melting into a puddle and setting these two imbeciles on fire for the insult. "I…" _Don't be rude, don't be rude…_ "What if I fall off?"

The Templar, disgusting man, coughed to cover up a barking laugh.

"Are you laughing at me?" she asked, incredulous. "It's a serious question."

"Take a lower bunk, then," Alice said mildly. "If it eases your fears."

Ease her… Lisette fumed. It did _not_ ease her fears. Maker, what were the chances of contracting fleas in this place? Very high, Lisette guessed. She wandered down the aisle between the bunks, disappointment and despair battling for control of her heart. This was unbelievable. The apprentices here were treated like common animals. This wasn't a dormitory, it was a stable. She kept her back to the other two, certain she would break down and cry at any moment. How could Didier _do_ this to her? Lisette walked to the end of the row and set down her bag, with a quivering pout, on the very last bed.

It was cold and ugly and she would be surrounded by breathing and snoring and… _smells_.

There was a commotion out in the hall, footsteps pounding by. Alice ran to the door, skirts rustling. "What's going on?" she called. A Templar crashed by.

"Matthew's set his robes on fire," the soldier called in passing.

"_Again_?" Alice sighed. "Can you do the rest, Cullen?"

Oh, right, _Cullen_. That was his name. The Templar nodded once and Alice fled down the hall, presumably to help poor, stupid little Matthew. _Run for your life, Matthew, and don't stop until you reach Denerim. _Lisette stood very still, wondering what "the rest" might entail. A lecture? A list of rules? Strip search? She smirked at that last part and then bit her lip to keep from giggling. The Templar Cullen clanked over to her and stared at her bag. Then he looked at her and frowned.

"What?" she asked, icy. "What did she mean, 'the rest' - What is that?"

"I, um, w-well, I have to s-search your bag… M-madem… Mademoi… _Miss_."

Lisette had been waiting for this. She wasn't foolish enough to believe they'd let her just waltz in with whatever contraband she had dragged from Orlais. It was also why her brain still buzzed and ached. There were several books of a... _delicate_ kind that she did not want them to find. She had successfully hidden them at Verchiel Tower for years. She wasn't going to let one silly, sweaty Templar take them now. And so she shoved her bag toward him, smiling cooperatively.

"But of course," she added sweetly.

The Templar separated the ties of her bag and peered inside. Lisette felt the Veil shudder as she poured all of her concentration into keeping those books hidden by her spell. Her right hand curled into a fist. It was much harder to continue the charm with someone giving such close scrutiny. She watched him carefully as he pulled out other, totally innocuous books and flipped through them. Satisfied, he put those back. _Right, as if you can even read them._ He sifted through clothing – those would need a wash later then – and slippers and, finally, her unmentionables. What? Did he expect she ran around totally bare beneath her robes? The Templar turned fuchsia and stuffed the lacy drawers into the bag as if they might bite him. Then he muttered something under his breath, discovering that the lace had caught on his gauntlet. Lisette would have reached over to help him salvage his waning dignity, but she couldn't risk letting the spell drop.

The Templar grunted and took a step away, his fawn-colored eyebrows knit with confusion. He seemed to be considering something, his mouth quirked to the side in thoughtfulness. It was a lovely mouth, perhaps soft and kissable. _No it isn't, he just fumbled all over your panties. He's a clumsy, graceless dullard. An enemy._

His mouth opened and closed. He peered inside the bag again and then at her. Somewhere along the line, his eyes had darkened.

"A-are you… Casting?"

Lisette blanched.

"No," she said, smiling prettily. "Why would I be casting?" She threw in a casual laugh for good measure. _See? We're just friends here, nothing unusual going on at all… No spells or anything ridiculous like that…_

Lisette didn't see his hand fly out, but she felt it. He grasped her right wrist, squeezing tightly. She gasped, hurt, and her concentration dropped. There was a quiet, tell-tale shifting in her bag. She wanted to snap his neck. No, better yet, start a little fire down in his metal underpants. _ Just try and get that one out in time._

The Templar whirled back to her things, keeping one eye on her at all times. Great, she was already on his shit list. Life was going to be miserable with one cranky Templar constantly breathing down her neck. And he hadn't even found the books yet. What would he say when he did?

At that moment, he pulled out one such book. Grimacing, he opened the pages. He must have flipped to a good one and it must have had an illustration because the text was not in his language. Lisette wondered which picture it was. Perhaps it was the one where Leduc is ravishing Colette in the rose garden. _That_ was a very good one. His mouth dropped open, wide enough to comfortably catch an albatross. Then he slammed his jaw shut and gestured at her with the book. Lisette stared at the cover forlornly – the familiar scrolling script, the faded illustration…

_Colette Et Leduc_

It was her favorite, and now he had his mean hands all over it. _So long, my beauties_.

"W-what… Is this?"

Lisette smirked, shrugging, knowing she had been caught. It was no use arguing. He would confiscate the books and burn them. Stupid Templars. No taste and no sense of humor. And certainly no appetite for raunchy romances. "It's a book," Lisette replied flatly.

"I can see that."

"Oh? And what else did you see?" she teased. His face flamed.

"I'm taking these," he said, pulling out book after book. She glanced inside the bag. He had left the boring ones. Of course. It was easy to pick out which were about history and religion and which were not. The pink, flourishing rows of text and kissing lovers on the cover were a fairly reliable indicator of content.

"Y-you can't have this sort of…"

Smut? Distraction? _Inspiration_?

"Stuff."

The Templar gathered up the books, looking scandalized just to be holding them against his chest. Lisette said a silent goodbye. She had expected to depend upon those stories to keep her sane and happy. But now she was going to live in a horrid stable with a bunch of scabby children and have nothing to make her smile or dream or wish. The Templar fixed her with a weird, disappointed look, as if he were her father or something, and began to shuffle away. Lisette was furious, feeling a fire grow within her, a desire to _destroy_. She could cast if she wanted to… If she was stupid enough.

Instead, she flicked her hand at the Templar dismissively. "Yes. Leave. Go stutter at someone else."

The Templar reeled, as if struck in the face, and then turned and marched out of the dormitories. Lisette sank down onto her bed and, though she fought it, cried bitterly. This was a terrible place, a cold, unfeeling place. She wouldn't leave her bed until it was time for meal. Then at least she could see Didier and he would make her smile. Lisette grabbed her bag and flung it onto the floor. Something skittered out and glided over the stones. She hopped up, gasping with elation, and retrieved the fallen treasure.

Lisette ran her palm over the cover lovingly: _Le Chevalier_. Yes! This one had a plain, unassuming cover and he could not read the Orlesian! She grinned, her heart fluttering with sudden hope. Praise the Maker; he had missed one.


	2. Two

**Two**

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

-H.L. Mencken

*

Cullen was taking the books to Greagoir before they could burn a hole in his armor. He was going to have to scrub his eyes just to get that one tantalizing image out of his brain. Steaming, Cullen stomped down the corridor, accidentally slamming his shoulder into a fellow Templar, who cried out in surprise and alarm. Cullen didn't pause to apologize or excuse himself. He was incandescent, lit with the flames of righteousness.

Yes, good. He would deposit the books on Greagoir's desk and say… say… "See? They're trouble! They're all trouble! This only proves it."

A tiny voice in the back of Cullen's head whimpered, "It's her first day."

_ That's not the point._

Cullen slowed his steps, his arms trembling a little. Mages shouldn't have corrupting ideas swimming in their heads. That's how they became blood mages, that's how the demons found them. But perhaps in Orlais they were less strict about these things. Maybe the girl simply didn't know. No, that was idiotic, she had been hiding them. She _knew_ they were wrong and filthy and… and… _banned_. Not only that, she had used magic to try and conceal them. What word had Irving used? That's right. _Prodigy_. Cullen hated that word, fixated on it. He heard "prodigy" and knew that it really meant "freak." She was powerful. Dangerous. This had catastrophe written all over it.

And really, that was just the tip of the horrific iceberg. Just before her arrival, standing in the hall waiting and wishing his armor were ten pounds lighter, Cullen had overheard Irving mention that she was just nineteen years old. _Nineteen_? Who in all of Thedas would let a girl that young dress so provocatively? He sighed. Orlesians, that's who. She was beautiful, radiant, and he was furious with Greagoir and Irving. How dare they send him headlong into a trap? Nobody had warned him she would be so young, or so pretty. And he was _certain_ nobody had explained to him that it was perfectly acceptable for gorgeous young Orlesian women to wear cobalt robes that plunged down to their bellybutton and left precisely _nothing_ to the imagination.

He was sweating. Again. _Pull yourself together_. He was huffing, too, breathing as if he'd just run from the edge of Lake Calenhad up to the Harrowing Chamber without stopping. Cullen was just a few feet away from Greagoir's office, dawdling in the anteroom, surrounded by the stern faces of statues that, in all likelihood, agreed with turning her in. This couldn't go unmentioned. Greagoir had specifically told him to look out for strange behavior. This qualified.

_She's nineteen_, that unbelievably annoying little voice said, _it's her first day_.

Perhaps he was being unfair. She was far from home, probably frightened and sad, and judging by her expressions, completely put out by what they offered her for accommodations. The young mage did not look pleased at all to be living in the cramped dormitories. Cullen couldn't blame her. He also couldn't imagine the scandal if some innocent, well-meaning Fereldan apprentice had come across her reading one of those books. Cullen was just glad he had managed to confiscate them. But now what? He was no longer so sure it was right to tattle. Everyone deserved a second chance.

_ Except mages, remember? Which she is… Moron._

So instead, he would just hide them. That was the simplest solution. Templars were given their own rooms, he could easily shove them in a box and keep them beneath his bed, or no, in his closet. Cullen turned on his heel, not expecting to find Greagoir waiting just behind him. He nearly slammed into the Knight-Commander, his arms full of filthy reading material. Greagoir looked pleased to see him, if a little distracted. Cullen shifted his arms until he was quite sure all of the covers were hidden. His armor felt unmanageably heavy and hot.

"Off to the library?" Greagoir asked, raising one steel-colored eyebrow.

"Found a mess, ser," Cullen muttered, "In the hall."

"Children," Greagoir said with a sigh. "Always forgetting to pick up after themselves."

_That new Orlesian mage is dangerous and vile and should be locked away forever to keep us safe. _Cullen breezed by, his smile wavering. He remembered Irving's words. Pick your battles. He would keep an eye on that mage, and if she caused more trouble, _then_ he would seek Greagoir's opinion. Mercy and understanding were noble qualities in a Templar too, right? _Right?_

"Did you say something?"

Cullen paused, swallowing hard. "No, ser. Me, ser? _No_."

"Oh, right. Say – how's our newest apprentice settling in?" Greagoir asked, halfway into his office.

_ Like a fox in a henhouse…_

"S-Seems fine, ser. A little disoriented maybe," Cullen said. _That's two lies_. He winced.

"That's to be expected," the Knight-Commander said with a shrug. "Carry on."

Cullen _did not run_ to his room, though his skin seethed, covered in itchy flames. He felt as if every single mage and Templar he passed was watching him, judging him. Somehow they knew. Somehow they could smell his guilt. He cursed himself for being such a pathetic doormat. That girl should be on her way to Aeonar, not roaming the halls of the Tower. There was no room for leniency, not at all, and yet…

_No_. One more chance. She had one more chance to follow the rules. They could always make her Tranquil. Then he thought of those striking blue eyes staring blankly and his heart gave a troublesome lurch. Cullen kicked open the door to his room, which he did not lock – what did a Templar have to hide? – and shoved the books under his bed.

_Why are you sweating? Stop sweating._

He sat down hard on the mattress, dumping his head into his hands. He felt like a fool. Not just for siding with a mage, which was unheard of, but for siding with a mage who was rude and untrustworthy and _foreign_.

_ Yes. Leave. Go stutter at someone else._

Cullen squeezed his eyes shut. She had no idea what she had said, what that _meant_. He had gotten over his speech impediment, mostly. It hadn't returned since before the Tower fell. There had been one mage who made him stammer. He couldn't help it. She made him nervous with her yearning glances and flirtations. Cullen had grown up with that stutter, lived with it all his life. As a boy, his mother would tell him it was because he was just too smart – he had too many ideas and they were all rushing to come out at once. She told him that every morning before school to make him feel strong, to give him protection from the teasing children… Every morning, that is, until the house burned down and she was taken from him. And then nobody wanted him. Nobody but the Chantry.

And Cullen had mastered that weakness in adolescence, overcoming his stuttering until that one, lovely mage was so very kind to him. The other Templars were merciless. _What's the matter Cullen, mage got your tongue? _But they were all dead now, and she was dead, too. The memory of her screams as the demons overtook her still played over and over again in his nightmares. _Mallory, Mallory, resist them! _That memory drifted back, shrieking in his ears, blood thundering in his head. Cullen snapped his head up. He wouldn't give in to despair. His eyes slanted downward, to the hidden contraband beneath him. Perhaps unclean books were enough to tempt demons out of the Fade. Was he endangering himself by harboring them?

Silly. A silly idea. They were just books. He couldn't even read them. Not that he wanted to. He would burn them, he decided, at the first opportunity. It's not like he could return them to the mage, and he had no use for them. It wasn't smart to keep temptations around. There were enough challenges in the world without having to contend with dirty stories lurking under his bed. _Like pretty blonde mages with sparkling blue eyes…_

That wasn't helpful.

He would have to pray. His mind seemed determined to draw his thoughts toward forbidden ideas. This was a test, only a test of his faith. The chapel would sooth him, it always did. Then he would take his lyrium and go to midday meal and everything would be perfectly normal again.

* * *

Lisette waited for a punishment that never came.

She was tense and drawn all through the midday meal – which was tolerable, owing only to the Orlesian cook running the kitchen – and fumbled with her cutlery like a hopeless barbarian. The other Orlesians at the table tried to make conversation. She could only hope they attributed her bumbling to nerves. Lisette answered their questions as best she could, while ticking down the seconds until someone swept in and screamed at her. The dining hall was almost full. She would be humiliated in front of everyone – her peers, her new teachers, the _Templars_… But nobody came. Surely, that stammering Templar with the nice hair had been given plenty of time to report her infractions? He had been furious with her so why was it taking so long? Perhaps this was part of the punishment, making her day dreadful and nauseating while she waited for judgment.

Shrewd. Shrewd and extremely cruel.

Not as cruel as the Templars in Verchiel, maybe, but ingenious enough. Even this, however, seemed excessive. Making her tremulous, making her thoughts race, making her formulate dozens of ways to refute the Templar's story... As if she could. The evidence was overwhelming. And damning. She couldn't talk her way out of this one. Worst of all, Didier would be disappointed – not mad or spiteful, just disappointed. Lisette hated disappointing Didier. He was the one person who believed in her. When all the other mages wanted to make her Tranquil, take her life and happiness away, Didier had stuck up for her and prevailed. Didier himself sat beside her, smoothly dismantling his chicken thigh and eating with his usual quick, deft bites. He did everything like a dance.

"Could we go to the training hall," Lisette said quietly, poking at her food, "After the meal?"

"I thought you wanted to rest," Didier said in between bites.

"I'm not tired."

Didier finished eating a moment later, and Lisette left the table with a few noncommittal sounds to the other Orlesians. It was a relief to leave. Flee. And if she could make it out of the dining hall quickly, perhaps the Templars would deliver their punishment somewhere more private. She loathed the idea of looking stupid in front of the others. She didn't want to give the Fereldan apprentices a reason to mock her. Didier grew stiff and quiet as they walked by the Templar table on their way out. They seemed to resonate with a dangerous aura.

Lisette allowed the faintest smile of liberation to grace her lips as they stepped through the archway and into the hall. Which was the exact moment, of course, the Templar Cullen arrived for meal. Lisette stopped short, stuffing the urge to cling to Didier for help. It's not like he could do anything. She would be at the mercy of the First Enchanter. The Templar, oddly enough, looked as stricken as she felt. He became so entirely ridged, a light breeze would have knocked him over onto the flat of his back.

"Hello," Lisette said pointedly, staring at his toes.

The Templar said nothing, skirting around them with his nose up, as if she and Didier were standing in a garbage bin. Didier snorted softly, taking Lisette by the elbow and hurrying her along. She could understand his reaction. Templars at Verchiel did not eat in a common area with the mages. Templars were present at meals, of course, but not to eat. They watched. They were always watching. Precautions were taken to make sure Templars and mages rarely met in any way that could be construed as "social." A mage never saw a Templar with his helmet off. A Templar was never seen smiling or laughing. They had no sense of humor, no personality beyond "guardian." Perhaps the Orlesians understood better that total separation and alienation was preferable to pretending everyone could just be friends.

"Eating beside those brutes," Didier muttered. Lisette struggled to keep up with his long strides. "It's enough to drive one mad."

"Perhaps it will not be so strange… After a while."

Didier smiled a little. "I appreciate your optimism, _ma bichette_, and I will endeavor to share in it."

They lost their way twice, but a senior mage in the library was kind enough to show them the way to the training hall. It was a tall, open space with many bookshelves and tables scattered with research and open books. Lisette looked at the books with a sigh. Somewhere a Templar was examining her romances and deciding what to do with her. Maybe they would go easy on her. She did not dare to hope that the books would be returned. For a moment, Didier wandered on his own, gazing up at the ceiling-high shelves, marveling at the sheer volume of knowledge. He had probably read all of these books at one point in Orlesian, but seeing them again in this new tongue was inspiring. Even Lisette, who hated the coarseness of this language, could appreciate how majestic the books looked all lined up and on display, their spines lovingly cleaned and polished.

"Shall we begin?" Didier asked, striding to the opposite end of the hall.

Lisette nodded, anchoring her feet to the floor, preparing for the jolt of excitement that always preceded a lesson. She preferred Didier's method of instruction. He focused on practical spell-casting, convinced that more traditional read-read-practice-cast methods were stifling and inferior. Lisette knew enough of Tower politics to understand that this preference made him unpopular among the upper echelon of both Magi and Templars. He was the "reckless" teacher and Lisette his "reckless" pupil. It came as no surprise then, when they were chosen to leave the tower and go to Ferelden. Lisette could easily conjure the image of the First Enchanter's whiny old face, grinning in triumph as Lisette and Didier were shown from the Tower. It was as much a gift to the Fereldans as it was an eviction from Orlais.

Her heart stirred at this idea. They would never be welcomed back.

The air in the hall began to crackle and spit. Twin spires of lightning were winding up Didier's arms, flashing out at the shelves as they grew in power and intensity. He was giving her more notice than usual, perhaps because she was tired from the journey. Lisette did not hesitate to nurture her own attack, choosing fire instead. She was also careful to keep her guard up, ready to fling a shield over herself should Didier's lightning prove too quick.

She lived for this moment, this burst of feeling before the first blows rained. For now, the thought of her punishment was pushed far from her thoughts. Those problems became distant, unimportant. What mattered was Didier, his power, his desire to teach her. His presence was a comfort. They might never return to Verchiel, but at least they would be exiled together. She had never known another teacher who cared so much or who knew so many secrets. One day, she knew, all of his secrets would be hers.

The hall exploded with light and sound. Didier had flung his lightning, giving a boisterous shout of effort. Lisette timed her shield, wrapping the sparkling ring of energy around her middle as she sent her ball of flame soaring through the air. Didier deflected her spell with a flippant wave of his hand and returned another volley of lightning. She dodged, just barely, feeling the licking charges snap against her clothing. Dimly, she heard footsteps, but she would die before she let her concentration break. She gave a tremendous grunt, a ripple of razor sharp ice shards skating across the floor. Didier had to throw up a shield and jump to avoid them, allowing Lisette an opening as he regrouped. She whipped a ball of fire down the hall, cursing when Didier sidestepped and the flames sputtered out. The burst of air that slammed into her chest was unexpected. She hadn't anticipated the spell or its speed and she was knocked back on the floor.

Lisette cried out as her back connected with the stones. She was out of breath, panting, her chest aching slightly where the spell had hit her. The room shivered with the remnants of their magic, Didier's thunderous laugh just barely audible above the sound of her pounding heart. Her teacher stood over her, flushed with exertion, and helped her to her feet. He wrapped her in a tight, affectionate hug. Lisette brushed off her robes.

"A good showing, _ma bichette_, but next time don't let your guard down so easily."

"I won't."

She stood bent in half for a moment, trying to catch her breath. Didier patted her between the shoulders, still chuckling. He was always boisterous and excitable after a duel. Lisette felt it too, but chose to keep that jumpy sensation locked tight in her chest. It was exhilarating and familiar and something to hold on to.

"Oh," Didier muttered.

Lisette glanced in her teacher's direction, surprised to find they were not alone. She had heard the footsteps during the duel but assumed it was someone outside in the corridor. They had drawn an audience, apparently, the Templar Cullen among them. It was all Templars, in fact, watching silently behind those inscrutable helmets. Except for Cullen, of course, whose narrow brown eyes were lit with sudden flame. Lisette paled. This was it. They had come to drag her off.

"Can I help you?" Didier asked coldly. He inched forward, planting himself between Lisette and the Templars. They scattered, wandering off to stare at the wall or sharpen their swords or whatever. Except Cullen. He stood stock-still, wearing a pained expression, as if his boots had fused to the stones.

"Can I help you?" Didier asked again, a sharper edge to his voice.

"Ignore him," Lisette said breezily, forcing a smile she did not feel. "It's their job to watch us."

"This one isn't wearing his helmet," Didier observed, as if Cullen weren't standing in the room, perfectly sensible to every word they were saying. "It's… unsettling. I don't like to think of them having faces." If Cullen noticed the implicit threat in Didier's words, he did not react beyond a small tension in his jaw.

_ Where are my books? Why haven't you reported me? And why are you staring like that? _

"I need to lie down," Lisette said suddenly. She walked briskly out of the hall, noticing - against her will - as she stepped around the Templar that he smelled faintly of the woods, moss maybe, or smoke, with just the tiniest hint of sweat underneath. It wasn't unpleasant, Lisette admitted, just unlike anything she had experienced before. Most Orlesian men wore heavy colognes that masked their natural scent. They never smelled so natural or so… so _wild_. She felt a dangerous frisson tighten her spine.

"Will you be at supper?" Didier called. _Don't worry about me so much_.

"Perhaps. I might just sleep."

"Classes start for you tomorrow," Didier added as she left. "Behave yourself."

Lisette smirked, out of sight of both Didier and the Templar. Yes, she certainly was doing a fantastic job of behaving so far – incensing a Templar by smuggling in dirty books, embarrassing herself at dinner and then drawing everyone's attention by having a vigorous duel with Didier. And somehow she had evaded punishment so far. Lisette made a silent pact to be better, to blend in. She didn't want to give these confounded Fereldans a reason to single her out. That's what had gotten her booted out of Verchiel in the first place. And the very, _very_ last thing she needed was a handsome Templar who smelled like all that was freedom to take a shining to her and _not_ report her misdeeds. What? Did he think she owed him now? Was that his plan? She would not rely on his kindness. She also did not expect that shining of his to last. If his strangled expression was any indication, the sight of her dueling with Didier was enough to make him wet his armor.

She returned to the dormitories with her head buzzing. The other apprentices would be done with classes soon. She wanted a bath, a long bath, before all sense of privacy was ripped away, never to be found again.

Lisette did not risk taking her precious book to the washrooms. It must now be treated like the holiest of relics. She waited until she was clean and fresh to dry off completely, comb out her long blonde hair, and crawl into bed. A beeswax candle had been set aside for her. She lit it with her fingertip, happy to find that the candles here were of good quality. At least they expected their apprentices to read and provided adequate materials for just that purpose. She decided that, since the Templar had remained utterly silent, he had not told anyone about her books. A strange and intriguing development, a development that made her feel slightly better about snuggling down to read from _Le Chevalier_. No one was coming to punish her. She would have a few blissful hours to herself before the dormitory was choked with brats. At least she would undergo the Harrowing soon. Certainly full-fledged mages were not expected to endure the company of children?

She would ask Didier about it tomorrow and make sure he talked to the First Enchanter about nailing down a day for her Harrowing.

Clean and almost content, Lisette sighed, her breath fluttering the pages. _The knight touched her body all over, skimming his hard fingertips over her skin from toes to head, making her feel worshipped, loved. Even now when she could sense the power of his hunger for her, he took his time, foregoing urgency for love._

Lisette shuddered_. The power of his hunger for her_. Ooh, she liked that line. She read it over and over again until she had it memorized and filed away. She dog-eared the page. Though this was one of her favorite passages and she longed to read on, she was becoming drowsy, exhausted and road weary and drained from her duel. Her thoughts were thick, foggy as she tried in vain to keep her eyes open. At least she had the presence of mind to stuff the book beneath her pillow before she fell asleep, her head filled with worries and hopes and the curiously arousing smell of a deep, dark forest.


	3. Three

**Three**

**Note**: Thanks for the favorites and the (one awesome) review! Please leave a comment if you're enjoying the story or, you know, if you want to smack Cullen's cute armored bum. :)

*

But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

-Jane Austen

*

Cullen reported to the Knight-Commander's office the next morning with a thick and hazy head. He had slept even less than usual, plagued by the illegal books hidden under his cot. When midnight rolled around and he still hadn't managed to even close his eyes properly, he moved the stack of books to his armoire. Cullen trooped back to bed, sliding through the sliver of moonlight on his floor, satisfied that the problem had been solved. But then he felt worse, vulnerable. At least if the books were near him, then he could properly guard them. He got up again and locked his door for the first time ever. Feeling like a common criminal, he skulked to the dresser, took up the books and brought them back to the space beneath his bed. As he knelt to shove them out of sight, the pages fluttered, a puff of scent wafting out toward him.

It hit him right in the pit of his stomach. He didn't have words for it. Gardenia? No. Vanilla? No. Something far more feminine and exotic and… _Maker_… Intoxicating.

Cullen spent the rest of the night forgetting that smell. He was a man of discipline and intelligence. He could forget a smell if it damn well took the entire night. Under no circumstances would he touch those books again unless it be to burn them and never, never again would he allow himself to indulge in that heavenly, disarming scent.

_And what did curiosity do to the cat, Cullen? It didn't slap the cat on the wrist, no, it __**killed**__ the cat. Killed it._

Sobered, Cullen nevertheless spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, willing it to collapse and kill him and destroy forever the temptations poisoning his will.

"Cullen, is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Cullen jolted awake. Greagoir was staring at him. The office felt tiny, like a tissue box Cullen had been forcibly stuffed into. Oh Maker, how had _Greagoir_, of all fucking people, found out? Had Alice overheard them in the dormitory? No, that wasn't possible. But how else would Greagoir know about the mage's books? This was torment. This was living outside of the Maker's gaze.

Cullen found his voice at the bottom of a murky well. "I'm… I'm not sure what you…"

"Apprentice Lisette and that fool mentor of hers dueling without supervision in the training hall – ring a bell? Thompson tells me you were there. You _saw_ this. You didn't think it prudent to report back to me?"

Relief so potent it made him want to weep flooded his body. He flicked his eyes skyward in silent thanks to the Maker for getting him out of that one.

"Oh! Ser, I… I thought since it was so loud that everyone knew…"

"Everyone _does_ know, but I expect to know _first_. That's your job, Cullen, to tell me these things so I'm not blindsided by Irving!" Greagoir slammed his armored fist onto the table. Cullen jerked, as if Greagoir's fist had connected with his breastplate and not the desk. Cullen didn't know what to say, so he blurted out his usual placeholder, "Forgive me, Knight-Commander."

Greagoir was silent. Seething.

"Everything is so… _uncertain_. I just need you on top of your game, Cullen, is that understood?"

"Of course, ser. It won't happen again, ser."

Greagoir nodded, waving the tips of his fingers. "Just… _Watch_ them, Cullen. From what Thompson tells me her powers are… _significant_."

"I will not let them out of my sight," Cullen said, wishing he had phrased it better.

"Good. Dismissed."

Cullen shut the door behind him, making a fist that he wanted to smash against his own face. This was not the path to glory. He had lied to the Knight-Commander. Even then, the books hidden beneath his cot burned in his mind's eye. Now he had promised to keep a close eye on the mage girl and that was the last thing he wanted. He _wanted_ to do his duty, to be a paragon of truth and honesty, but purposely hanging around this Lisette woman seemed like the fastest way to purgatory.

It was early spring, mild and by all accounts cool outside, so why was he so hot all the time? Cullen yanked at the neck of his breastplate. Something nagged. Maybe it was Greagoir's tone, the way he said "watch them" like he was expecting another uprising. There was a good chance the Knight-Commander knew more about these Orlesians than he was letting on. They could have a reputation. A bad one. Cullen hurried his steps. There was no time to be lost. He needed to pray and eat and then find the Orlesian girl and make certain she behaved. He didn't know whether to watch her or the tutor – perhaps the man posed a greater threat. Cullen could believe that wholeheartedly. His blood curdled at the memory of that shocking, deafening duel.

Cullen had watched Lisette crash onto the floor. He even heard her back give a disheartening crack. But she got up and then that man, that man that was _much too old_ to touch her, wrapped his arms around and… Cullen sighed, so exasperated with himself he wanted to spend the rest of the day in the chapel, praying, cleansing himself. _Right, because __**you're**__ just the right age for her. _No, he was not any age for her at all. But that Didier fellow was unusually familiar. _He's her tutor, idiot, he's probably known her for years. _Still, that didn't mean it was appropriate for a man of Didier's age to hug a mere apprentice. That sort of business was strictly forbidden in the Circle Tower. _Are you huffing and puffing because he acted inappropriately or because he acted inappropriately __**and**__ he's uncommonly handsome?_

The Circle Tower wasn't impervious to scandal. Cullen had heard of older mages taking advantage of apprentices, lulling them into a sense of complacency and trust and then pushing them into… forbidden relations. The rules against that kind of thing weren't Templar rules, they were _Circle_ rules. Still, it happened. Anything could happen. Nobody was totally immune to lust, not mages or Templars. _Or you_.

_Yes, I am. I don't have those thoughts._

_ Anymore, you mean._

_ No. Never._

Cullen dug his fingernails into his palms. This was not the way one started a productive, pious day. It didn't help, either, that Cullen couldn't stop thinking about the thing Didier had called her. Maybe Cullen's ears were malfunctioning, but he could've sworn he called Lisette a bitch. To her face. And she had _smiled_. It didn't make any sense. Maybe it was an Orlesian thing. Maybe bitch meant "chaste pupil" and not what Cullen understood it to mean. Female. Dog. In heat. _Stop that. _Or perhaps Didier's accent had obscured the real word and Cullen was jumping to ridiculous conclusions. Which wouldn't be the first time…

Distracted, Cullen wasn't expecting to round the corner outside of Greagoir's office and run headlong into a familiar face. He leapt back.

"I know you," the woman said at once, her face breaking into a smile, "It's Cullen, isn't it?"

"And you are… Wynne?" Cullen asked breathlessly. "You… were there, when the Tower fell." He paused and then chuckled, unexplainably relieved to see her. They had never been close, but any familiar face was a comfort. "With the Grey Wardens."

"That's the most enthusiastic welcome I've gotten so far," Wynne said with a glittering laugh. "Well, Irving cried, but you're the second best welcome."

Cullen was shocked to find himself in her arms. He hugged her back. Why did humans laugh when they were nervous or surprised? Strange. He steadied himself and remembered that he was a Templar. Straightening up, he cleared his throat and regained his neutrality. Wynne was dressed in red from head to toe, her white hair pulled back into a clean, severe ponytail. She was flushed, either from the stairs or excitement, Cullen couldn't say.

"You've come back," he said.

"Irving has recalled all the Circle mages abroad. I suppose he wanted a few old faces around," Wynne replied. She covered her mouth, blushing. "Did I say _old_? I meant… wise."

"You're meaning is clear enough," Cullen said good-naturedly, indulging in a smile. "The Knight-Commander will be pleased to see another Fereldan among us."

Us. No, not _us_. Among the _mages_.

"I doubt he will be excited as all that," Wynne replied. "But I should make my respects."

Wynne took a few steps toward Greagoir's office and stopped, turning to look at Cullen over her shoulder. "It is good to see you."

"And you," Cullen replied truthfully. Then his nagging thoughts returned and he coughed. "Could you… Would you mind keeping an eye on an apprentice... Now that you're back, I mean."

Wynne's eyes narrowed. "An apprentice?"

"She's new and…" _And heartbreaking in every way..._ "And from Orlais. The Knight-Commander is worried that she might be… well… prone to _mishaps_. I promised to be vigilant, as always, but a mage's _understanding_ wouldn't hurt."

"I see," Wynne said cryptically. Cullen decided he was imagining the flash of mischief in her eyes. "And her name?"

"Lisette," Cullen choked. "Her name is Lisette."

Funny he should mention her. Not two hours later he stumbled upon the Orlesian mage in the library on his midmorning round. Some of the older apprentices were allowed a free period between classes to study or rest. She had chosen to take hers in the library, apparently. Only Templars and senior mages populated the library during class time hours. Most of the apprentices with free time fled to their bunks, catching a nap or doing _anything at all_ that didn't involve books. But there she was, sitting at one of the long, narrow tables, a stack of books piled before her. He didn't need to see her face. He recognized the deep, cobalt velvet of her robe and the unique color of her pale blonde hair. She was also the only apprentice in the library… No… the only _person_ in the library. Maybe she had come exactly because it was empty and quiet.

This was bad. Dangerous. The word forbidden flashed in front of his eyes like a wall of fire.

Cullen stood flattened against the wall just inside the door. A Templar waited just outside. Apparently that Templar hadn't deemed it necessary to follow Lisette inside and watch her. Which was probably fine, since she seemed absorbed in her reading anyway. So Cullen didn't make a sound, which he was exceptionally good at, letting his eyes wander over her shoulder to the book she was reading. The air smelled like dust, with the tiniest undercurrent of mold. And something else, something _extra_. Even at that distance he recognized her perfume… And yet she didn't reek of lavender and rose like the other Orlesians, who more or less bathed in rich, scented oils. It was the same perfume he had detected on her books. Dry and floral and delicate. He swallowed a humiliated groan.

_ Strong in the Maker, purified in His light, strong in the Maker, purified in his Light…_

But something was wrong. The way the book looked in her hands… It was all wrong. There was a giant encyclopedia pinched in her fingers, and inside that, a smaller book, something with yellowed pages and floppy corners where someone had been dog-earring… Impossible. She was smarter than that. This was the oldest, _lamest_ trick in the book…

Stunned, Cullen released a long, shuddering breath. Lisette wasn't studying at all. He caught the title of the chapter as she flipped the page with wetted fingertips. Either he had failed to confiscate all of Lisette's _banned materials_ or the Circle Tower library was now carrying books that had chapter titles like _La Puissance de Leur Sexe_.

Sexe.

_Sex_.

One didn't need to be fluent in Orlesian to get the stomach-churning gist of such a title, or to interpret the accompanying illustration of a man and a naked woman in the deepest throes of lurid passion.

* * *

It was made perfectly clear from day one that Lisette was not welcome. While the teachers were split almost evenly between Fereldans and Orlesians, the apprentices were all local, and they hated her. They stared. No, they gaped. From the moment she woke, cold and exhausted, to the second she walked into her first class, the Fereldans did an amazing job of making her feel like an ogre. They whispered about her clothes and her hair. They pointed at her funny walk. They giggled when she scraped around for the right words in class... And they hated most of all that she was a finer mage than all of them put together.

Really, she shouldn't have been in class with them at all. Lisette sat through the most mundane explanations of spells she had learned and mastered years ago. And then the idiotic teachers called on her because she was knew and wanted to include her, so she fired off the spell with no hesitation at all, making her classmates hate her even more. At least the teachers loved her.

It wasn't until third period, when she was about to give up altogether out of embarrassment and despair, that she realized how much she missed Verchiel. Lisette had never made many friends. She was solitary and contrary by nature. But she had two close friends, two other students that, like her, excelled without even trying. Lisette wished this power made her somehow more affable and likeable, but it didn't. Nobody liked a show-off. She resented her own abilities, the fluidity with which magic came to her. But Giselle and Henri were like her. They too mastered spells with minimal effort and an abundance of instinct. Didier dubbed them Les Enfants de Jean-Georges. This was a subtle nod to Jean-Georges Fleuret, the greatest mage ever to rise to power in Orlais. He was a legend among mages, a man who had not only become First Enchanter, but an invaluable advisor to the then emperor, Charles.

Nobody before or since had made such an impact on the hearts and minds of Orlesian mages.

It was probably just a silly game, but Didier claimed that he saw that same kind of magnetic power in Lisette, Giselle and Henri. Mostly in Lisette. But that didn't stop the three apprentices from being inseparable. Giselle with her slew of troublesome boyfriends and Henri with his insane knack for thievery… They were quite the force to be reckoned with. And it was easy to misbehave when the Templars were faceless and silent. It was like going against the word of a statue. Who cared? Which was why they got into so many little scrapes, and why they continued time and time again to pull of hilarious capers. Once, Henri even managed to steal a bottle of wine from one of the senior enchanters' office. They drank it to drunkenness, which happened so fast they couldn't believe it. They were easily caught the next morning, when they all showed up to class late, painfully hung over.

By fourth period it became blatantly apparent that, while the apprentices disliked Lisette, their dislike did not extend to all Orlesians. The girls especially found Master Didier's class _most_ instructive. She heard more than one try to call him "Monsieur," their accents as faltering as their magic skills. It was acid in her ears. _Don't_ _attempt my language if you're determined to murder it…_

Lisette frowned at them all, disgusted.

_…Also don't flirt with my master. Remember that breathtaking fire spell I pulled off last period? It wouldn't be so very hard to toss one of those in your bedclothes tonight… I hear insufferable sluts burn as fast as kindling..._

She did not look forward to the next morning. She had a bet riding (against herself) that she would wake with at least one toad hopping up her sheets. Lisette smiled at this idea as she left fourth period and wordlessly padded toward the library. The girls at Verchiel had attempted far worse. The teasing there was nonstop. She was a freak. _Freak, freak, freak!_ And they never let her forget it. One morning she woke up with pink hair. Another? Popping boils over every inch of her skin. These Fereldan girls were catty, but she didn't for a moment think they could sink to the level of outright evil the Orlesian girls managed.

Lisette found the library with a little help from a bewildered-looking Templar. Through the slit of his helmet, she saw a pair of very fine and incredibly flabbergasted green eyes. When she asked his name, he simply said, "Bryce." He gave her thorough instructions and she found the library without further trouble. There was no one there except for a hunched old Fereldan enchanter, who soon left with one specific book clutched under her crooked arm.

There was something magical about libraries. Not magical like _she_ was magical, but in the more mundane sense of the word. It was alright to be silent and alone in a library, it was acceptable to be standoffish and separate. You didn't need an excuse to be quiet or to mind your own business – you could just sink into the books and forget everything else. When the teasing and staring became too much at Verchiel, she went to the library. It was only day two and Lisette was realizing that pattern would repeat itself. _Wherever you go, there you are._

And then, _you'll always be a freak_.

Stifling the urge to scream at the injustice of the world, Lisette went to the shelves and picked out the biggest, fattest book she could find. She didn't bother glancing at the title, retreating to one of the tables to set down her bag and settle in for a good, long read. Glancing around, Lisette found that the Templars here were either stupid or sloppy. There was one there, of course, but he was _outside_ the door. Maybe he didn't think one little apprentice could get up to no good. Lisette would teach him. She delved into her bag and pulled out _Le Chevalier_. It was just a matter of leaning back in the chair, propping up her knees against the table ledge and settling the encyclopedia in her lap. Then she could hide _Le Chevalier_ inside without anyone catching wise. As long as they stayed out in the hall, Lisette could enjoy her book freely.

And she did, for approximately forty-five minutes. She was nearing the end of the book when she heard a bizarre choking sound. Lisette cursed her stupidity. She had let herself get too engrossed in the story. The knight was trying desperately to regain his lady's trust after she discovered him paying respects to another woman during a dance. It was all a misunderstanding, of course, but the story was gripping. The knight was explaining in words tinged with yearning about the power of their love, and how the night they had spent together proved the power of their sexual connection…

_Did you not feel it, my lady? Our bodies met and the world collapsed, yet we emerged, unscathed._

It was passionate, riveting… And altogether too distracting.

Lisette turned her head but a little, and noticed a curious shadow smeared against the wall behind her. It was the Templar Cullen. _Blast it._ He had found her. He had a nose for naughtiness, it would appear. Lisette snapped the encyclopedia shut, trapping _Le Chevalier_ safely inside. _Just try and get this book out of my hands, you prying cad._

She tucked the encyclopedia under her arm and sat up, pushing away from the table. Lisette rearranged her robes and picked up her bag. It would be suspicious to try and walk out with the encyclopedia hidden away. It was better to make sure the Templars saw her leaving with it. That way, she could insist that she was simply borrowing a book for her studies, which all the other apprentices did daily anyway…

Lisette's slippered right foot was halfway out the door when she heard the Templar clear his throat significantly.

She stopped, cold, and turned to face him.

"Yes?" she asked casually. "Something you need?"

"That book," he said softly, "May I see it?"

Lisette inspected his calculating brown eyes, the grim determination of his lips… The enchanting little mole on his right cheek… _Fool, you're not supposed to inspect that_. Lisette cleared_ her own_ throat, and raised her chin imperiously. She had lost this fight once, she would not lose again. The Templar looked nervous anyway. He probably didn't have the authority to check her library books. Lisette glanced at the glimmering, _enormous_ sword at his side. Scratch that, he had all the authority in the world. Then her mind wandered to the phrase "enormous sword" and she blushed. That gave her an idea. There had to be a way out of this. He was a Templar. That was the key, she was sure of it.

"You may," she said coquettishly, in response to his question. She fluttered her eyelashes. "But only if you let me show you."

The Templar stiffened until his jaw looked ready to explode, his chestnut brown eyes wavered, suddenly unsure. _Busted_. "I… Show me?"

These Templars were all pitiful virgins. Not that Lisette had made the beast with two backs herself, but the mere mention of sex sent Templars running and screaming as if their hair was full of spiders. Lisette was the sort of virgin that could at least _discuss_ sex. The books helped. Since Verchiel Templars never spoke or even _thought_, Lisette couldn't employ this kind of trickery. Perhaps life here wouldn't be so bad after all. She sidled up to Cullen, making sure not to inhale. She didn't want to get sidetracked by his woodsy smell. But even through his armor, she could detect a tiny radiation of warmth. _Hot, are we?_

Lisette cracked the encyclopedia. As she intended, it fell open to _Le Chevalier_.

"Yes," she murmured, "_show_ you."

The Templar swallowed. Noisily. This was too fun. And too easy.

"Would you like to sit down with me?" Lisette asked.

"No," he replied hoarsely, "This is preferable, mademoiselle."

Well, _hello_. So he had managed to get that word out without collapsing into a pile of sodden bones. How nice for him. His stutter seemed to have disappeared, too_. Better and better… _Or perhaps a sign that he was feeling more confident. Regardless…

"Do you know the story of _Le Chevalier_?" Lisette inquired softly, moving a hair's breadth closer. She heard, _felt_, his sharp intake of breath.

"I do not."

"Would you like to hear it?"

"No."

"Are… Are you quite certain?"

"_Incredibly_ certain."

Lisette paused. _Phooey_. Still, all was not lost. She flipped to one of the dog-eared pages. Even she had to give a little sigh of excitement. There was the knight, his armor in pieces at his feet, his sheer tunic the only barrier between the knight and his lover. Said lover was wound around him, one thigh hitched around his hips, her head thrown back as she accepted the heat of his kiss upon her throat. Lisette brushed her fingertip across the place where the knight's hand covered the woman's bare breast. The Templar's throat dipped in instantaneous response. The heat radiating off his armor intensified noticeably. Lisette took this as a good sign.

"They're lovers," she said simply. This felt less like a trick now and more like legitimate flirting. _Bad_. Lisette looked up at him, surprised by his height, and reeled a little when his eyes meet hers. She wondered if he too felt the scorching shiver that raced up her spine. When their eyes met… Lisette refused to consider it. Templar. Watcher. Statue. _Killer_.

"I have to confiscate this," the Templar said, his voice thick with… authority? Regret? _Desire?_

"You can't," Lisette whispered, horrified that her plan had backfired. No! Not _Le Chevalier_, too, not her last precious book. He had already stolen everything from her. The bastard, the _villain_. It was her tether, her anchor… _No_. The walls and shelves of the library seemed to close in around her. "You can't."

"I must."

Lisette stumbled away from him. She clutched the encyclopedia to her chest with both hands. It was warm against her, as if alive. _Mine, _she thought_, mine and nobody can take it from me. These are my dreams, my dreams…_

"No."

"Please," he said in a rasping whisper, "Just hand it to me."

With blurry eyes, Lisette watched his right arm cross his body, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. _Yes, kill me. Do it. It couldn't hurt any worse than this_. _I have nothing left. Nothing left of home… _But he did not draw his weapon. Instead, the Templar took a giant step toward her. She smelled him. She didn't mean to, but his presence was wrapping around her. _Leaves, wet earth, pine… _His hand extended, silver metal fingers closing around the top of the encyclopedia. He tugged once, hard, wrenching it out of her grasp.

Lisette felt one hot tear course down her cheek.

"I hate you," she whispered, finding her voice and fleeing the library. "I hate you."


	4. Four

**Four**

**Note**: Thank you all for the kind favorites and comments. I love knowing what you all think as this little story spins out of control and forces me - _forces_ me I say! - to update.

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.

-Robert Frost

*

"Do you know the story of _Le Chevalier_?"

_Not yet._

"I do not."

"Would you like to hear it?"

_Yes, with all my heart. Read it to me, in the Orlesian. I want to hear the words rolling off your tongue…_

"No."

"Are… Are you quite certain?"

_ Please, have mercy. Our souls… My soul, hangs in the balance. I cannot be tempted._

"_Incredibly_ certain."

"They're lovers."

_ Do you want to destroy me? Is that what you want?_

Cullen wondered dimly if he would ever sleep again. It didn't seem likely. He was either explaining silently to the Maker that there really was a good reason he hadn't burned her books yet or replaying their brief interlude in the library. She had stood so close to him he had _felt_ her breath swirl against his neck and it was warm and slightly moist, like the air off of a lake just before a storm. When was the last time he had been outside in a storm? When was the last time he had felt rain on his face? And why in the Maker's name was he thinking about these things? They didn't have anything to do with… well, _anything_. It was going too far. She had only been in the Tower two days and Cullen was losing sleep over her flirtations. No, not flirtations, _schemes_.

_ She doesn't want you. She just wanted to keep that wretched book._

This was the obvious truth. She had no real interest in him. She was conniving and, if he were to be really honest with himself, the perfect target for a demon. Why go for a sturdy, no-nonsense mage when you could instead go straight for the easy target? She was practically screaming: possess me!

Maker.

_ Not like that, pervert._

So it was with understandable trepidation that Cullen attended her Harrowing a week later. Greagoir asked him to be present, to make the killing blow if she were to fail. Cullen didn't feel comfortable standing there in the whistling, open room with his thoughts fiendishly bent toward the idea that she was, unfortunately, not likely to survive the Harrowing and that it would be his duty to cut her down. He also disliked the way her mentor, Didier, was looking at him. It was the tensest Harrowing he had ever seen, with Irving and Greagoir visibly nervous. This was the first Harrowing to take place since the Towers destruction; were they tempting fate by letting her do this so soon? Cullen certainly thought so. She had hardly been allowed to adjust to her new life and now she was being tossed into the deep end and told to swim. No, that was incorrect, she _wanted_ this. Not that he had been watching her, keeping constant tabs on her, pulling his hair out at night because she no longer looked at him _that_ way… No, he was _not doing_ any of those things. He _did not_ have a good idea of her mental state from prowling the corridors, seeking her out and watching her in her classes, meals, and alarmingly frequent one-on-one sessions with Didier.

_ You are a hopelessly creepy person._

Cullen also _did not know_ that, admittedly, she looked in fine form magically. And in every other way. _No_.

He stood next to Greagoir in the Harrowing Chamber, his armored fingers drumming constantly on the pommel of his sword. Cullen hated Harrowings. In principal, he knew they were important and necessary to test an apprentice's willpower. It just always gave him a terrifying, liquid feeling to watch these things happen. He couldn't imagine the fear, the self-doubt and apprehension an apprentice must feel as they stood there, faced down by the First Enchanter _and_ the Knight-Commander. What an astounding amount of pressure to put on a young person.

Irving stepped forward with his hands clasped in front of his moss-green robes and bowed his head a little. Lisette responded in kind. She didn't look nearly nervous enough. Her neck was very still, her silvery blond hair arranged in a sleek chignon against her nape. Her generous lips were pursed in concentration. For the occasion, she donned a new set of robes that Cullen had never seen before. They were inevitably a gift from Didier, the creeper, who was gazing at Lisette like she was his prize mare. Cullen might have secretly congratulated Didier on his exceptionally good taste in women's clothing if he didn't also want so badly to punch him in the throat. Lisette shimmered in her dark magenta robes. They were more modest than her cobalt set, but still had a provocative little keyhole right over the bust. It was almost worse, to see less of her and have his thoughts turn to what lay beneath.

_ This is her Harrowing, you impious meathead. Stop ogling or use that blade on yourself._

Lisette seemed to sense his unease and flicked her eyes to his face. Cullen stared over her shoulder, willing himself not to shake. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that her expression was stony, icy. Of course it was. _She hates you, remember?_ It wasn't the sort of hate that was just going to go away. She wasn't going to suddenly reconsider and say: Oh I hated you for a week, but now I don't think you're so bad.

Lisette turned to look at Irving as the First Enchanter began to speak.

"Your mind will travel to the Fade. There you will face a challenge, my dear. If you overcome this challenge, you will return and continue your education here as a mage. However, if you fail, the Templars you see behind me will do as they are instructed, and end your suffering." Well, that was a gentle way of putting it. "End your suffering." Leave it to Irving to describe a grisly, painful death as something so unthreatening. Irving waited for her reaction. Cullen had seen an apprentice actually wet their robes at this exact point in the proceedings. But Lisette simply nodded, calm and collected. Cullen couldn't help but wonder if maybe her mentor had explained rather more than he should have. Apprentices were to face the Harrowing without any warning at all and no idea what they were in for. It wouldn't have struck him as out of character for Didier to tell Lisette the finer details of the event.

But these were empty accusations. Cullen had no proof and wasn't about to humiliate her by hinting that she was a cheat. Perhaps she really didn't fear going into the Fade. Lisette stepped up to the pedestal. Only then did he see her hand tremble, once, as she reached toward it. Dust motes danced around her face. Her eyes shifted to the sword in his hand and Cullen watched her stony expression falter for a second, as if she were suddenly very sad.

_I'm sorry_, he wanted to say, _I have no choice_.

Only once before had Cullen stood at a Harrowing and wished and prayed for an apprentice to cross over and return smoothly. This would be the second time. He watched, breath held, as Lisette took hold of the pedestal and her body went slack. She stood, but unnaturally, as if the bones had been sucked out of her body. Her eyes rolled back, revealing the bright whites, and her lips parted gently as if in quiet surprise. Sometimes a Harrowing took only minutes and the apprentice became an abomination almost as soon as they entered the Fade. Other times, Cullen and the others would wait for an hour or two, the uncertain minutes ticking by, Cullen growing more and more nervous by the second.

At least Didier had the good grace to appear concerned. Even if he had told Lisette what awaited her in the Harrowing Chamber, he didn't seem absolutely sure she would come back unscathed. This eased Cullen's mind a little. He should give Lisette more credit; by all reports, she was bored to tears in her classes, too advanced to really gain any knowledge from the apprentice lessons. And these were reports, of course, not firsthand impressions from personally skulking in doorways.

"How long has it been?" Didier said suddenly, a hitch in his voice.

"Half an hour," Greagoir replied stonily. "If she is not back by the hour, then I would start worrying."

Cullen winced. Greagoir was never good at hiding his distaste behind pleasantries. Judging by the steel-edge to his voice, Greagoir was in no rush to make friends with Didier. Cullen mused over why that might be – the Orlesian's superior manner, his reckless disregard for the rules or his inappropriate behavior toward Lisette. For Cullen, it was a powerful combination of all three.

Didier fell silent, chastised or simply waiting for the right moment to riposte.

There hadn't been a Harrowing for months. It was like experiencing his first one all over again. Sweat was trickling down his neck into his armor and he split his time between worrying over Lisette and dreading his part in the ceremony. He began to shake with nerves. What if he had to kill her? How would he ever sleep again knowing her blood was on the end of his blade? That kind of stain never wore off. At least he had been spared the agony of killing Mallory when the demons took her. Other Templars had struck her down, which was good, because Cullen wasn't certain he could end her. And this would be worse – at least when the Tower was in chaos he could hide his affection for Mallory behind the panic of just trying to stay alive. But here… There would be nothing to hide behind. Greagoir would give that very specific nod and Cullen would raise his blade above his head and…

Lisette tumbled to the floor, a soft sigh escaping her lips.

Cullen actually jerked forward to try and catch her, and then remembered that such behavior was incredibly inappropriate and Greagoir was _right there_ watching him. So he planted the tip of his sword in the little rut between the stones and watched Irving kneel over Lisette and peel back her eyelids. There was no sign of any demonic taint, no physical changes… She had survived. Cullen bit back a little yelp of triumph on her behalf. She had returned quickly, smoothly. _Even more quickly than Mallory_.

_Irrelevant_.

"Congratulations," Irving said to Didier, reaching up to shake the Orlesian's hand. "I think this proves that she was indeed ready to take the next step. I look forward to her residency and I know she will make a fine teacher someday."

"That is most gracious of you," Didier replied, pumping Irving's hand, no doubt exhilarated by the stiff rush of relief that came after an apprentice survived. Cullen ought to know. He was feeling it, too.

Irving looked up at him, his eyes soft and smiling. "Cullen, could you please take her to the mage quarters? The north-most rooms should be relatively empty. I believe only one other mage has taken up residence there."

Of course. She no longer had to sleep in the crowded apprentice dormitories. There were few mages at the Tower, a gap that Irving was still trying to fill. They had plenty of apprentices now and about a dozen enchanters, but only three or four proper mages, not nearly enough to fill up the space allotted for them. Lisette would be sharing a partitioned room with one other mage instead of two. And then Cullen remembered that Irving was staring at him and that he was asking him to actually physically remove Lisette from the Harrowing Chamber… which would involve arms and a delightfully warm body nestled against his chest, and…

And discipline. Lots and lots of discipline. And perhaps a quick prayer wouldn't hurt.

"Of course," Cullen stammered. He sheathed his blade and knelt next to Irving, scooping Lisette up and into his arms. Funny, how one could never judge just how small a person was until they were cradled in your arms. Her head curled against his shoulder, as if she were just having a nap, as if this were perfectly normal behavior. Didier grunted something about "barbaric treatment" and swished away.

"If you could collect Lisette's things from the dormitories," Irving added to Didier's back, "It will make the transition effortless."

Didier nodded, stomping down the stairs toward the door. Cullen shared a rare look with the First Enchanter. The concern in Irving's eyes belied his gentle demeanor. He didn't want Didier touching Lisette. If only Irving understood that Cullen really shouldn't be touching her either. But given the choice, Cullen was glad to be the one to do it. Just the thought of that despicable letch anywhere near Lisette's room made Cullen's left eye twitch.

He followed Didier down the stairs, taking pains to watch Lisette's feet and head. It wouldn't do to have her wake up with bruises blackening her face and toes. Navigating her safely through the doorways and around the corners gave Cullen something to concentrate on. If he focused doggedly enough on that, he could completely ignore the floral scent clinging to her hair and the little puffs of her breath fluttering against his chin. He chanced to glance down at her as he stepped out into the corridor and turned north toward her new room. Did mages dream when they were like this? Or was she mentally exhausted to the point where even dreaming was too much? From the way she squirmed in his arms, she wasn't completely unconscious. He wondered what she dreamt of - her home perhaps, or maybe her books, and the gallant, handsome knights that dwelled within. Cullen knew enough Orlesian to translate chevalier to knight. He was sort of a knight, right? I mean, he had the armor and the sword and some people might call the duties of a Templar gallant… But no, he doubted _Le Chevalier_ was a sweeping tail of abstinence and prayer and tireless devotion to the Maker's will.

Did the knight ever carry his lady like this? Cullen wondered. Well, really it was immaterial, because this was a one-off. He would never get to hold her like this again. It was a treat. _No, it isn't, it's a test. Hatred, remember? She hates you and you love the Maker. Andraste help you if she wakes up and you've got your sweaty paws all over her…_

Cullen sped up a little, dodging into her quarters with his heart thrusting wildly against his breastplate. He didn't want to ruin her Harrowing by reminding her that he was the arsehole who had stolen her books. And subsequently failed to burn them. For a moment, he was gripped by a fancy – if he hurried, he could steal back up to his room and grab one of the books. How would she react when she woke, gently, alone and in her new room, to find one of her dear books hidden beneath her pillow?

_She would probably scream and light your head on fire for being so intolerably weird._

It was an impossible idea anyway. He would never make it to the Templars' dormitories and back again before Didier turned up. And how would that look? _Oh don't mind me, terrifying Orlesian with magical powers untold, I'm just planting a steamy book under this young lady's pillow in the hopes that she'll love me. __**Like**__ me. Gah._

Nervous and disgusted with himself, Cullen slightly miscalculated the distance from his arms to the top of the bed. More than slightly. He dropped her. Cullen cursed under his breath, watching her sigh out a little sound of surprise as he unceremoniously _dumped_ her on the bed. _Brilliant. Just fantastic. You are the most gallant Gallant to go gallanting in Gallantland. Why don't you backhand her across the face to complete the picture?_

Cullen knelt down next to the bed, realizing then that he had never before been asked to do perform this harrowing (ha!) task. A few enchanters or mages were usually brought in to help the newly-Harrowed mage to their quarters. Irving, apparently, had acted on instinct to get Lisette out of the chamber in the arms of someone he could trust. Cullen winced. He was not trustworthy, not when Lisette was unfurling like a sensual vine, stretching her arms above her head and thrusting out her chest…

He kissed her forehead. It was terrible. It was an instinct. He reeled back, his throat constricting with the force of his shame… and desire. Lisette smiled. She actually _smiled_. That only made it exponentially worse. Then her slender arms were reaching up and hooking around his neck and drawing him back down and…

"_Ce qui?_ _C'est des conneries_!"

Cullen had no idea what that meant, but from the way the Orlesian spat it out all at once, it couldn't be good. He shoved at Lisette's arms, sweating and panting as he tried to dislodge her curiously strong grip. _Let go, let go, for the Maker's sake, let go…_ Cullen tipped his head back to find Didier glowering down at him.

"This is absolutely not what it looks like."

"For your sake, I hope that's true."

"She just… She _grabbed_ me." Cullen was going to start sobbing with frustration any second. "_Help_."

Didier reached over and took hold of Lisette's wrist. He clenched his eyes and Cullen felt the Veil thin around them, a whisper of energy. Lisette went limp, falling back onto the bed with a soft thump. Cullen heaved himself to his feet and stumbled by Didier.

"I would never… _Ever_…"

"It can be a reaction in sleep," Didier said calmly, but Cullen could feel the man's dark blue eyes raking over him. Sizing him up? Passing judgment? Taking measurements for a coffin? Didier glanced down at Lisette, satisfied that she really _was_ still sleeping. Thank the Maker she hadn't woken up from all the commotion and… kissing. No, not kissing, just the one kiss. Still… Then the Orlesian chuckled and patted Cullen on the back. "Watch yourself," Didier whispered with a sinister wink, "Or she'll put you under her spell."

* * *

Lisette woke in a strange bed underneath a strange light with a strange feeling squeezing her heart.

She panicked for a moment, wondering if she had died and crossed over into the Fade forever. This ceiling was odd, unfamiliar, and the wall to her right was dark and paneled. The mattress was squishy and the pillows firm… This wasn't the dormitory. She glanced to her left, finding a patient, smiling face. She knew that face. Didier. Lisette sighed and dropped her head back onto the pillow. She had survived the Harrowing. That explained everything… except for the weird fluttery feeling in her chest. She must have dreamt of something pleasant.

"You did it," Didier said quietly, taking hold of her hand. "I am so proud."

"You didn't really think I would fail, did you?" She switched to Orlesian. Her head hurt too much to find the words in another language. "Did you?"

"I always believed you would be just fine."

It was a relief to talk in their native tongue. She missed it. And now that she didn't have any more _interesting_ books to read in Orlesian, she had to settle for boring historical dreck and poetry. Lisette let her eyes wander along the walls and over her bedspread. This was a much nicer arrangement, and not terribly different from her old room in Verchiel. From the way their voices echoed, Lisette could tell the room was not solely hers. There would be dividers, no doubt, little alcoves for a few mages to share one room.

"How do you feel?" Didier asked, settling back in his chair and crossing one leg over the other.

"Strange," she whispered, "A little… confused. But I expected that."

"You may have unsettling dreams tonight," Didier warned her, "It's normal. And of course your duties are different now. You may still attend classes, but with the intention of learning how to teach. And you will spend more time studying on your own or with the senior enchanters."

"And you?" Lisette asked, grinning.

"And with me. _Bien sur_."

Lisette nodded, nursing a little seed of excitement in her mind. She loved studying with Didier. She loved… No, he was her mentor, her best friend. Their love was platonic, and always would be. That thought shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. As much as the teacher-apprentice relationship appealed to her wicked side, she knew it was unethical and dangerous. Too much affection there could endanger both of their lives. Relations like that were how mages were sent to Aeonar or made Tranquil.

"You will also," Didier continued, "Be expected to take on a greater… responsibility."

"How so?" She was tired. She didn't want all of this explained to her just yet. A nap and some tea sounded delightful, and a quiet moment to examine the unusual jittery feeling in her heart.

"We Orlesians nearly outnumber the Fereldans now," Didier said. He waved his hand around, "Well, not the apprentices, but the mages and enchanters are evenly divided. Soon we will be able to exert our superiority. Irving is a relic."

Lisette pinched the bridge of her nose. This was too much too fast. She had only _just_ survived her Harrowing. "I'm exhausted, Didier. Can we discuss this later when my brain isn't all jelly?"

A frown darkened his expression, just for a second, and then he was on his feet, smiling and touching her wrist with his usual gentility. "Of course. I should be flogged for filling your head with troubles so soon after your Harrowing. I will look forward to seeing you at supper."

Lisette nodded. He turned to go. "Didier – I… how did I get here?"

He grunted and glanced at her over his shoulder, "That Templar carried you down from the Chamber."

"_Which_ Templar?" Why was her pulse speeding up? That wasn't supposed to happen.

"The one that seems to be allergic to his helmet."

Didier swept around the corner, his robe trailing behind. Lisette tried to stay perfectly still, hoping that would encourage her heart to return to its normal, more dignified rhythm. Cullen had carried her. It was impossible not to imagine such a thing. Had he asked to or was he forced into it? Did he hate every minute of it? Did he hate to be near her evil, sinful flesh? It was then that she noticed the faint, almost undetectable trace of his scent in the air. It hovered over her bed like a light morning mist. She inhaled, sharply, perturbed by how drastically her head began to spin. A man had never carried her before, well, not since infancy. It was sort of… terribly romantic to consider. And it would have been even more so, if Cullen weren't a thieving jerk. He did have lovely eyes, soulful, with those dark lashes, and she had always wanted to kiss someone with whiskers…

Absolutely not. Thief. _Templar_.

She almost wished he could read Orlesian! What a laugh! He would never survive the temptation to read her unholy books. And wasn't that the one thing Templars hated most of all? Temptation? They were monks, sworn to celibacy. How awful it must be, then, to know you can just crack a book and dive right into an intimate description of a woman's body. Was that against their vows, too? Pity. Well, there were always the illustrations, if Cullen hadn't burned the books already in a fit of misguided zealotry.

A wild and dangerous idea began to form in her head. Cullen hadn't turned her in for the books, so perhaps he had also failed to destroy them. The only logical place to hide them, then, was his quarters. As a mage, she now had more freedom and was not expected to be in class all day long. It would just be a matter of memorizing his schedule, performing a simple invisibility charm, perhaps with the aid of a strong potion, and timing her visit when the Templars changed shifts. Henri, the little rapscallion, had taught her how to pick a lock with a hairpin, so getting into his quarters wouldn't be much of a challenge. Though how would she know which was his? He had an unusual scent, but she wasn't a _mabari_. She would have to find out some other way. Surely not all Templars were as mercilessly tight-assed as Cullen? He might be impervious to her charms, but others may not be. In fact, that one with the green eyes had seemed flattered and confused when she spoke to him. What was his name? Brian? Brill? _Bryce_.

Yes, Bryce.

She would start tonight, just after supper. The longer she waited, the better the chance her books would be burned. Was she really going to do this? _You just want to get a look in his room_. No, there were greater things at stake here than books. It was a matter of pride. And if he noticed the books were gone she would do a much better job of hiding them this time.

Bryce stood guard outside the laboratory, as usual, his shoulders squirming about as he tried to discretely stretch them. Lisette felt a heady rush of exhilaration as she waited at the end of the corridor, watching mages and Templars file by. This reminded her of Giselle and Henri, and she hoped that those two rogues, wherever they may be, would be proud of her. She was going to pull off an amazing caper all on her own. The corridor emptied out as the transition between dinner and evening study wound down to completion. Poor Bryce was standing all alone, apparently very uncomfortable in his heavy armor, a sickly water buffalo just waiting to be picked off by a gutsy lioness.

Lisette swished down the hall, putting a healthy amount of sway into her hips. Her modest magenta robes were tucked away in the trunk at the end of her bed. The daring cut of her cobalt robes was much better suited to this purpose. She had fenced an apple from the dining hall and waited until Bryce's head turned at the sound of her steps; then she took a big, feral bite of the apple, training her eyes on the horizontal slit of his helmet. It was fun to be so completely naughty and she made a silent promise to be less boring. The other students already hated her, so why not do as she pleased? Life was incredibly dull without Giselle and Henri, but that was about to change…

"Evening, Bryce." She thickened her accent, knowing that had a tendency to drive some Fereldan men wild. Bryce appeared to be one of them. She could actually hear his knees knocking together. Clank-clank-clank…

"You… You remembered my name." His voice echoed inside his cavernous helmet. Lisette ducked her head, blushing prettily.

"How could I forget."

_ Take it slow, don't frighten him away…_

Bryce tried to scratch at the back of his neck and then remembered he couldn't reach it _and_ he was wearing bulky gauntlets. An opening, but maybe it was too soon… _Live dangerously, you minx._

"I could get that for you," Lisette said. She widened her eyes. _Completely innocent, see? Just a friend helping a friend…_

"Oh… I… I don't think. I mean, you don't want to do that," Bryce said at last.

"It must be agony to stand around in that dreadful armor all day."

"It's not so bad," Bryce said with a shrug. _Oh Bryce, you're so manly. Idiot._ "You get used to it."

"I think I'd go mad! What if you get an itch?"

"You um, well, you just think very hard and make it go away," he said. Lisette took another bite of her apple, chewing thoughtfully when in reality she wasn't listening to him at all. There had to be a way to speed this along…

"Are you sure you don't want me to try?" She glanced up and down the corridor. "There's no one around. And I can keep a secret."

"I really don't… I mean, it's sweet of you to offer," he trailed off, his eyes flashing behind his helmet, "and _Maker_, you're very pretty. But… Listen, it just gets sort of, well, _warm_ under all this stuff and I'm a bit sweaty. It's horrible, I'm sorry, that was… Rude."

Lisette laughed, leaning forward to put her hand on his wrist. Bryce stiffened at her touch and then seemed to notice that he hadn't been smote by the Maker, and relaxed. She giggled, hiding her mouth behind her half-eaten apple. "I don't mind a little sweat."

Clank-clank-clank. _Steady, boy._

"You… You really wouldn't mind?" Bryce asked sheepishly. "It's been itching like mad for hours."

"Is it the back of your neck?" Lisette asked conversationally. He nodded. "I _hate_ that. I always get bad ones there. A friend of mine used to say an itch starts there when somebody's thinking of you." Total bullshit, but Bryce's eyes went saucer-huge.

"Really?"

_Superstitious morons, the lot of you…_

"That's what she said, yes."

"Huh," he went silent for a moment and then reached up and dislodged the bucket from his head. Lisette forced her face into a neutral expression. He really was sweating under there. Copiously. Horrifically. But Colette and Leduc weren't going to rescue themselves… Lisette motioned for him to bend down, which he did, his face scarlet. He wasn't a bad looking boy, a little soft for her liking, babyish. She went up onto her tiptoes and clenched her jaw as she ran her nails along the back of his neck. He was dripping with sweat there and his blonde curls were soaking wet. Bryce made a strangled, grunting sound, as if he were suddenly going into labor. _Good grief, I'd hate to see what happened if someone actually kissed you._

Lisette took her hand back and smiled sweetly as he stood up again.

"That was… _Thank you_. You're an angel."

Bryce put his helmet back on with some reluctance. Lisette munched her apple. "What's it like… You know, living with all the other Templars?"

"Boring mostly," Bryce replied at once. "I mean, they're alright. But besides training and chapel and watching you all, there's really not much to _do_."

Lisette nodded, taking him very seriously. "I'm just… I'm just trying to picture it. You have a dormitory, you all sleep together, or…?"

"Oh!" Bryce shouted with laughter, "Oh no, we have separate rooms, thank the Maker. I mean can you imagine, all those men… the _snoring_?"

"I can imagine, actually. The dormitories are shared here, remember?"

He frowned. "Oh… Right."

"So you walk down a hall and there are rooms on either side or how does it go?"

Goodness gracious he was thick. _Yes, Bryce, tell me all of your Templar secrets. Where do you keep your weapons? What do the regulation undies look like?_

"Well there's a hall, yes," his pale brows knit together as he made a column with his hands and began point out the rooms as he went. "And I'm right here, you see, in the corner. And then it goes Thompson, Will, Aelfric, Roberts and then, um, oh right, Cullen's here at the end."

Her heart squeezed at the mention of his name. Lisette decided that was only because she was about to infiltrate his quarters. It was not at all related to his strong jaw or the way he always looked slightly forlorn… No, not related to that _at all_.

"So let me get this straight," Lisette said. She spoke the order back to him and watched him nod with each correct answer. _Thank you, Bryce, you've been a dear._

"And that's just our hall. The others are down and around the corner," Bryce said brightly. "I could tell you about those, too, if you like…?"

Lisette was about to tell him a resounding "Absolutely not – no, thank you," when shuffling footsteps echoed down the corridor from the south. She turned to see Cullen making slow progress down the hall. _Arms. Just look at those arms. I wonder what they look like without all the steel. Strong, probably, and dusted with dark hair._ She adjusted her stance a little, making it look as though she and Bryce were just having a brief conversation. As Cullen drew near, his brows raised in silent inquiry, Lisette said pointedly, "Thank you so much, ser. I can't believe I forget my way to the storerooms again! I think the Harrowing knocked my brains loose…"

"They're just across the hall," Cullen said crossly.

"Hello Cullen," Lisette spat. "But I'm afraid I wasn't asking you, was I?"

"But they're literally just…" He began to raise his hand to point, but Lisette had turned and flounced away. She hoped he was sad to see her go. And she hoped he didn't notice she wasn't headed for the storerooms at all. _Enjoy my books while you can, Templar, they won't be yours for long._


	5. Five

**Five**

**Note: **Please to be noting the change in rating. That is all.

*

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

-Jeanne Moreau

*

He really shouldn't have kissed her.

Or… _No_, he definitely should not have done that.

Who could have guessed one tiny brush of lips over skin could change so much? Every second, he teetered on the edge of what he was allowed to think. Cullen had sworn oaths, made vows, sacred, _important_ vows that deeply discouraged even the tamest thoughts. A pure mind, a pure heart, that was what the Revered Mother always said. It was impossible to lead a righteous life if your head was filled with nonsense all of the time. _Bend your thoughts to the Maker, give Him your heart so you may know compassion. Keep Him as a soldier does his shield, to guard against the base temptations of the world._

Cullen believed in the Maker, he did, and he wanted with all his heart to be good and worthy. But if the sisters were right, if his education was right, then why did that one chaste kiss feel so… so… pure? Shouldn't his heart, upon touching her, have turned black and corroded? Shouldn't he have been driven to lustful madness? But it was not so. Even if Didier hadn't interrupted, Cullen would have walked away satisfied with just that one embrace. He would not have kissed her again, even if her arms dragged him down like a current sucking down a dying sailor, even if she woke and asked him to stay, he would have been strong enough to say "no." Not yet. _Never again_.

But his heart felt light, as if it had suddenly sprouted tiny wings and wanted to fly up out of his throat. That lightness even endured when he saw Lisette speaking informally with Bryce in the corridor. It buoyed him when her harsh tone of voice threatened to tear at his carefully-constructed resolve. And that lightness had finally driven him to the library in the dead of night. It was silent, empty, the sound of his breathing and the sputtering of the candles the only companion to the hushed presence of the Tower's ghosts. Cullen took up the candle in its tulip-shaped glass holder, and carefully scanned the shelves. He was sure to find what he wanted. It was a normal enough book to have in a library, especially one that now accommodated a number of Orlesian minds.

_ This is total madness._

And it was, but Cullen pressed on. He wondered if he could keep that lightness in his heart going, if he could stoke it somehow, because he feared the moment of its disappearance. How would he cope without that sweet weightless feeling under his feet? If this was temptation, if this was what years of Chantry education had warned him against, then perhaps his education was wrong. No, not wrong, just incomplete. If he was completely honest with himself he would admit that kissing Lisette's forehead had made him feel closer to the Maker than ever before. It was an exalted feeling, thick with mystery and excitement and _life_.

The candle guttered, threatening to go out as Cullen's breathing became ragged with concentration. He held the flame further away from his face, and slowly inspected the book spines as they came into view. The general reference section was pitifully small. Mages didn't much care for learning about countries and cities they would never be allowed to visit, or learning languages they would never have occasion to use. But Cullen found what he was looking for, tucked into the corner of the very bottom shelf. He pulled it out, coughing into the crook of his elbow as an impressive tornado of dust kicked up around the dislodged volume. When he was no longer blinking dust out of his eyes, he inspected the cover closely.

_ Orlesian Dictionary and Phrasebook: For Beginning Students_

Oh good, for beginning students, eh? That certainly applied. Cullen was less than "beginning," he was probably closer to "eternally remedial." Cullen extinguished his candle with a twist of two wetted fingertips and backed out of the library. He didn't need the help of a flame to find his way back to the Templar dormitories. The halls were mapped into the back of his eyelids. He could probably find his room after being spun around a dozen times and blindfolded. Cullen nodded to each Templar he saw, and there weren't many, since the apprentices were all in bed and only the enchanters stayed up this late to… enchant, or whatever. He heard laughter drift out of a nearby room and he forced himself not to stop and investigate. It was the mage quarters. He couldn't tell if it was Lisette's laughter and, he thought with a sigh, it wasn't his business anyway. The Templars on duty would naturally go see what the fuss was about. It was probably nothing more than a few mages sharing an anecdote. It was probably not Lisette having guests… Or just one slimy guest in particular.

Briefly, Cullen once again questioned his motivations as he took the stairs up to his room two at a time. If kissing Lisette was lighting a fire, then surely learning Orlesian was throwing his whole hand in the flames. And what did he hope to accomplish? Without a real teacher, he would just have words, disconnected, useless. But at least he might understand something about her. At the moment, she was a seemingly endless collection of contradictions. She flirted with him, she flirted with Didier and _Bryce_, of all people. Not to be unfair to Bryce. He was really an alright guy, just a bit… bland. Dimwitted. _Right, because you're some kind of gentleman scholar_. Cullen sighed. He just wanted to _do_ something. Learning Orlesian, or at least thinking about it, was an activity to keep his mind occupied. Learning a language was not behavior unbecoming of a Templar. It was perfectly reasonable, actually, given the climate of the Tower. Maybe _all_ Templars should be required to learn the language, to know if any of the foreign mages were up to no good, plotting in their languid, florid tongue.

_ Or, you know, to romance one specific young woman._

_No_. Absolutely no romancing would be taking place, and Cullen would be ever so grateful – thank you _very_ much – to have that obnoxious devil on his shoulder silenced once and for all. He was the Maker's child. He was pure of thought and deed. That kiss had been nice but… well, this was just natural curiosity. Kissing Lisette was innocent and whatever it inspired him to do was innocent, too.

Cullen pushed open his door, grimacing, because he could have sworn he had remembered to lock it. He wasn't used to carrying around that blasted key. Maybe he was getting sloppy. He sighed and unbuckled his armor. It was such a habitual practice, he hardly had to think about it anymore. His hands glided smoothly from toggle to toggle, snaking under plates and lips and into sashes, finding the right angles with practiced speed. When he was stripped to his linen tunic and homespun leggings, he dropped down next to his bed and prayed, clasped hands resting on the mattress.

It was a tiny room, sparsely furnished – one bed, one bedraggled chair that never did anything but hold his armor, one arched window and an armoire that looked as if it had been handed down from a particularly rowdy family of ogres. There were more nicks and dents in the panels than on Cullen's sword. He knew the room inside and out, it was as much a part of him as it was the Tower. And perhaps he was part of the Tower too, in a way. It was his life… His home. His _prison_.

_ This is a blessed existence and I am humbled to live it._

The benefit of knowing a place so well was the he was instantly alerted to any changes, no matter how inconsequential or minute. Which was why he felt suddenly alert, strange, as if his skin no longer fit right over his bones. Cullen stood, dropping the dictionary on his bed, and walked a slow circle around the room. Shutters in place, chair where it always was, scuffs still across the stones, rug threadbare and shabby, bed made, door shut… So what was different? In a moment of sudden inspiration and paranoia, Cullen knelt and looked under the bed. The books were still there, nothing had moved exactly. So what felt so different?

It was infuriating. Maybe he was imagining things. Perhaps kissing that girl had rattled more than his heart. He flopped down onto the bed and - frustrated beyond rational explanation - lit his bedside lantern with flint and tinder on the second try. Then he opened the dictionary. The lantern flared, turning the walls ruddy orange. He crammed his pillow under his arms and propped himself up, holding the dictionary close to the light. There were a few things he wanted to check first, like the word "bitch," which he was now absolutely certain meant something else in Orlesian. Didier continuously slung that word around like it was nothing at all to be ashamed of.

Cullen flipped and flipped, finding the B section in the Orlesian half of the dictionary. He scanned down the words, muttering them aloud until he found what he was looking for. Cullen found both _bich_ and _bichette_ and after groping around in his memory for a moment, decided that he had definitely heard Didier say _bichette_. He read the entry with a growing sense of trepidation and disgust.

bichette {f} : noun. 1. A young hind. 2. A term of familiarity or endearment

He realized with a jolt that he was curling the pages back too roughly. Any second now and he would tear the poor little book clean in half. Cullen expelled a shaking breath and reread the entry just to be sure he wasn't hallucinating. Didier, a teacher, was calling his student a little doe. If that wasn't wildly inappropriate, Cullen didn't know what was. _How about kissing a girl without her consent? Mooning over her when you're sworn to celibacy and learning her language with dubious intent…_

There were no suspicious intentions here. None whatsoever. Which was why Cullen didn't actually know what his arm was doing when it dropped - of its own accord - down to the floor, and his left hand plucked one of the confiscated books from under his mattress. _This is wrong. You're wrong. You're going to burn for this._

He had chosen, at random, _Le Chevalier_. Cullen stared at the cover, his confidence fleeing. Never before had a simple book struck such reverberating terror into his heart. It was just an amalgam of paper and leather, glue and string. No, no it was more than that. It symbolized just one more step down an incredibly slippery slope, a slope that – coincidentally – led down to the mage quarters, the north-most mage quarters to be exact, to a young woman's room where she was even at that moment sleeping, warm and lovely and smelling like flowers. He wondered if she snored.

_ It doesn't matter if she snores. You will never, never find that out. Also, she probably doesn't, because her nose is nicely-shaped and she wouldn't have any trouble breathing._

The book opened itself. Of that much, Cullen was certain. He hadn't touched it. The binding fell open, parting itself to him. He thought of legs. _No, no legs. Books do not have legs._ The corner of the page, page fifty-two, to be precise, was turned down. There was a dark smudge over that little floppy corner, a stain, no doubt, from an avid reader recklessly wetting their fingertips too much before turning the page. Then Cullen thought of Lisette sucking on her fingertips and the next swallow he took was deafening. This was not scholarly. It was not even sane.

Didier's ominous warning floated back to him across time. _Watch yourself, or she'll put you under her spell._

Too. Bloody. Late.

Realizing he had started down this path by choice, it would be cowardly to turn back. Why borrow the dictionary if he was only going to learn one word? He had even swapped watch duty with Bryce for the singular purpose of visiting the library. It seemed stupid, and Cullen felt ashamed for being a thirty-four year old man who couldn't work up the stones to read a damned book. This wasn't sin incarnate. It was just a bunch of words, and if he wasn't strong enough to look at them without falling all to pieces, then he would never know if he was actually _faithful_ enough to avoid temptation. Templars spent all their life hiding, but how could a man know the depths of his will if he was never even tested? How shallow was his devotion if he couldn't decide for himself whether or not something was tempting and dangerous? That wasn't faith, it was weakness. How much more righteous was the man who stared into the mouth of the beast and raised his sword to strike without hesitation? The demons had tested his fortitude and he had won the day; now came the final test.

He would test himself.

A chill ran through the room. Cullen ignored it. _If that's you, demon, you're going to be disappointed. It will take more than silly temptations to fell me._

And the saddest part was, Cullen believed it, too.

Cullen picked words at random. His luck did not hold. Nor did his mental fortress. He saw names, Rosamund and Bertrand, but those didn't really count. The first word he saw was "chevalier" which he already knew, and the second was some iteration of "feel" which was innocuous enough. But after some furious skimming, word number three turned out to be "hunger."

Hunger.

_La faim_.

Cullen tested it aloud in both his own language and Orlesian. His voice was unexpectedly thick. Why had he never thought of that word in this… _unique_ context? He had probably spoken it aloud and thought of it millions of times, but never had it made his entire body go ridged. His skin felt like someone had painted him with oil and licked him with sparks. Everything pulsed. One thing in particular pulsed more than the rest. He couldn't stand it. He ground his hips into the mattress, which had the opposite effect that he wanted... It wasn't a punishment. It felt… _good_.

No.

_ Move on. Move on now before you do something you'll regret later…_

Things were not looking up for Cullen's experiment when words four, five and six were "fingertips," "urgency," and "body" respectively. When he strung them all together – knight, feel, hunger, fingertips, urgency and body – it formed a kind of story. Rather than being proud of the leaps and bounds his Orlesian had undergone in mere minutes, Cullen felt dizzy, as if he was disassembling, losing an essential part of himself. His thoughts screeched to a halt, fixating on the horrifying idea that a nineteen-year-old girl knew more about sex and romance than he did.

He wanted to cry, or scream, or hump his mattress again like a pathetic little boy. He didn't do any of these, however, but he lay very still, cradling his forehead against the open book. It sounded like there were hundreds of mouths in the room all breathing together – in and out, inhale exhale – hearts beating everywhere, _thundering_. Or perhaps just two mouths and two hearts, thundering together.

_Hunger_.

Cullen groaned. He _was_ hungry. Hungry for another chance to kiss Lisette's forehead. Her eyes haunted him, impossibly blue, humorous and whip-crack smart and dangerous. Dangerous in the best possible way. Old fantasies returned with excruciating speed, fantasies he had foolishly allowed himself when Mallory was still alive. But these quickly became new fantasies, and he was disgusted to find that the shame of it all, the forbidden nature of having Lisette for himself, of taking her, only made the temptation that much greater. He wanted her, _Maker_ did he want her.

His leggings were becoming uncomfortably tight. Without thinking, he reached down to loosen the strings and gasped when his hand brushed his aching erection. He scrunched up his face, using his last ounce of willpower to take his hand back and stuff it under the pillow. But his hips moved without his permission, grinding into the blankets, finding a pace both torturous and delicious, the friction unfamiliar and _incredible_. Even after Uldred destroyed the tower, after he lost his brothers, after he lost Mallory, when the tiniest dose of comfort would have gone miles and miles, he never allowed himself this. He wouldn't, _couldn't_ indulge. But now everything burned. His veins were too small, bursting…

He could smell the musty pages of her book mixing with the remnants of her delicate scent. That silken blonde hair. Those _eyes_. Cullen's brain lurched. _The __**knight**__** feels**__ her, his __**hunger**__ burns through to his __**fingertips**__; she senses his __**urgency**__ and gives up her __**body**__ to him._

Cullen opened his mouth against the book, ashamed to feel tears sliding down his flaming cheeks as his orgasm hit with brick wall force. It didn't so much come from his body as he slammed into it, face-first, a shriek dying in his throat as he experienced release for the first time in years. As he caught his breath, he could already feel the warm gush against his belly becoming sticky. He hated it. He needed it.

Above all, he could not ever allow himself to do it again.

* * *

The silence was hard to get used to.

In Verchiel, even at night, the Tower had a music of its own. Mages were permitted to play instruments and Lisette had the privilege of rooming next to a young woman who played the harp magnificently. She practiced every night before bed and Lisette would time her reading so that she hopped into bed with a book just when Cecile started playing. Those chords, those dripping, luscious sounds would wipe clean the day, as if dropping a magic curtain that, when lifted, showed a clean, empty stage. Cecile was a frigid cow during the day, but at night? She was Lisette's very best friend.

She missed that sound. Maker, she even missed Cecile herself. She could've put up with all her moaning and groaning if it meant hearing that harp music at night. But Kinloch Hold was deadly quiet at night. Lisette had taken to calling it a Hold in the dark hours, because that's the only time it truly felt like a prison, something martial and made for cruelty. During the day, she enjoyed a pleasurable amount of freedom. During the day it was the Tower, at night? The Hold.

The silence was especially unnerving when one was attempting to quickly and quietly slip into the Templar wing. Lisette tiptoed to the door of her quarters, certain that her hammering heart would give her away. She pulled a slim vial from out of her dark robes, uncorking it with her teeth before sucking it down. The taste was nauseating, like drinking sludgy olive oil, but a moment later she felt the answering shudder from the Veil. Her powers pulsed within her. Concentrating, she closed her eyes and whispered the incantation. It wasn't a spectacularly difficult spell to master, not like fire shields or healing, but it took a tremendous amount of energy to perpetuate. Becoming invisible for a few seconds was cake, prolonging that invisibility was less… cakey.

If she wanted to be honest with herself, Lisette would admit that this was a suicidal idea. One false step, one _sneeze_, and she would be irrevocably doomed. But she had worked herself up to make the potion and slip on her darkest, most voluminous robes, so logically it was just one more push of bravery to take the plunge and finish the deed. Besides, Lisette was sort of dying to see what the Templars looked like out of all that cold steel. Not Cullen, though, Cullen would be on his late night round. She knew his schedule well enough to note that on Thursday nights, Cullen took his break after supper and went back on watch to cover the nine to two shift. Discovering this pattern took a bit of investigating and more than a few sleepless nights. But now it would all work out. She had done the research. Now it was time for the pay off.

Lisette rushed down the hall at a brisk walk. Running might make her concentration drop, and she didn't want to risk taking a corner too quickly and smashing into someone. The Templar floor was devilishly easy to find. Two Templars guarded it, but Lisette had waited until the laboratory Templars changed to the midnight shift. They would come marching down the hall any second and Lisette would slip in behind them, easy-peasy. Like clockwork, the Templars appeared, chatting to each other, believing nobody would hear them since the corridor was completely empty except for other Templars. Their voices grew louder and clearer as they walked right by her, boots echoing in unison.

"Did you see Elodie today?"

"Maker, that robe. Girl's got legs for days."

_ Nice. Very pious, boys._

Lisette crept behind them, watching the swishing hems of their magenta skirts to keep from tripping and fouling up the whole plot. They were generous enough to hold the door for each other, allowing Lisette an opportunity to dart in between them and into the tall corridor beyond. She immediately hid behind a pillar, slowing her breathing as the two Templars shuffled away, still discussing the joys of Elodie's "curvy gams." She found herself in what looked to be a training hall of some sort. There were wooden dummies and weapon racks lining the walls and the tell-tale scratch marks of swordplay running along the floor. The overpowering smell of masculine sweat was a bit of a hint as well.

_ Don't they ever wash this place?_

She noted that there were no more sentries actually stationed inside the Templar wing. Lisette bounced from pillar to pillar, trying to be cautious for propriety's sake. She could all but hear Henri barking in her ear about the importance of constant vigilance. There were an abundance of bright, flaming sconces and Lisette avoided them, wary of creating an inopportune shadow, should her spell fail. Prodding Bryce for information was all well and good, but actually making heads or tails of the place was no simple matter. There were dark halls everywhere, and voices, so many frightening voices, and doors, too and Lisette realized with a jolt that Bryce had explained the rooms to her in a column, not a circle. But she had come too far to give up.

Helpfully, many of the Templars were in their private rooms with the doors open. She resisted the urge to peek in and see what they were up to. Mostly, she saw a few blurs of white, their shirts probably, and the rare glimpse of a bare back. Her heart kept up its furious pace, making her breath come in short, panting spurts. She was behind enemy lines, surrounded by Templars. The realization of just _how many_ Templars made her slightly lightheaded and giddy. Death waited around every corner, in every room, probably even on the chamber pot.

In her head, she numbered the rooms as she skipped down the corridor. Bryce had recounted the layout faithfully. The very last door before a hairpin corner was locked. Cullen's. She stared at the dark and ominous door, asking herself one last time if she was really going to do it. She was. She did.

Lisette plucked a hairpin from her chignon and knelt to poke at the lock. Ancient doors like these had rusty, pathetic locking mechanisms that gave way without much effort. She glanced down the hall as the hammer eased back, making a quiet click. There was no one about, just the muffled chant of a few Templars muttering their prayers before bed. Lisette shrugged inside, closing the door behind her as softly as she could. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the absolute blinding darkness of the room. The shutters were closed, and not so much as a splinter of moonlight made it through. In the absence of her sight, her other senses jumped to compensate. Everything smelled of him. She might have been standing with her nose right up against his chest, it was that overpowering.

_ There will be no nuzzling of chests tonight, thank you very much._

Lisette blinked into the shadows, a man-sized cot melting out of the darkness. It didn't take Lisette but a moment to slither under the bed and find her beloved books thrown in a haphazard heap, mixed in with a few hair-raisingly fragrant socks and what appeared to be some kind of screw contraption for tightening armor hinges. She was about to scoop the books into the folds of her robe when she heard the distinct sound of armor shuffling about. Her heart stopped. It simply stopped and wouldn't start working again. That was close, that sound, _too_ close. Lisette threw herself the rest of the way under the bed. _Death! Death! Lots of death and dying!_ Her elbows ached. At the last moment, she considered throwing herself on his mercy, confessing, but no, she was now committed to hiding. _Just wait it out._

_What are you doing here? Infernal man! You're supposed to be on your watch, you're supposed to be down by the dining hall… You're supposed to be… anywhere but here!_

The footsteps grew louder, closer. The door creaked and shut again and she heard a long, weary sigh. This was bad. This was worse than bad. This got mages tossed out of windows. The way down probably took hours. Lisette shrank against the wall, nothing between her and Cullen's shins but a short stack of books. She heard soft, metallic sounds and watched, horror-stricken, as piece after piece of armor hit the floor. He was undressing. _Oh Maker_. She placed her palm over her heart in the hopes that bit of pressure would get it beating again. Then his toes were bare and Lisette realized she had never looked closely at a man's feet before. They were fuzzy on top, but his nails were trimmed and clean and Lisette could see a few curling wisps of his leg hair just below the bottoms of his leggings.

Cullen dropped to his knees, nearly giving Lisette another heart attack, and she slowly, carefully pulled the hood of her robe up and over her head and face. Thank the Maker she had worn black. There was a lot of praying, which was boring but kind of cute, and then a hollow drumming sound on the mattress as Cullen tossed something onto it. He started to pace, which made Lisette nervous. Had he sensed her? Was that even possible? Instantly, she stopped casting the invisibility spell. Then, faster than she could have anticipated, his face was right there, staring at her, close enough to reach out and touch.

_Maker. Maker preserve me. I will never be a bad girl ever again._

Either the Maker heard her and was planning to take her up on that promise, or Cullen couldn't see her in the distorting shadows and darkness of her robe. He stood again, satisfied there was nothing there or deciding what to do with the troublesome girl hiding beneath his bed. Then Lisette covered her mouth to keep from gasping as he practically leapt onto the bed, crushing the coiled ropes of the mattress down into her shoulder. Just how much did he weigh exactly? Was the bed going to give out altogether under the crushing mass of his apparently _gargantuan_ body?

Cullen started muttering. Lisette started weighing her options. There was no sneaking out while he was awake. The books would simply make too much noise if she tried to sneak by them. There was also the very scary matter of the door. Would he notice if she cast a harmless sleeping spell on him? _Templar, remember? He would most definitely notice that._ Perhaps he was a deep sleeper, and she could wait until he started snoring up a storm to wiggle out from under the bed and dash out the door. Nothing seemed viable or even possible, and absolutely nothing could be done until he stopped reading and went to bed.

Lisette shifted, trying to think, flattening out to escape the biting pain of the sagging mattress ropes. She drew an invisible line up from her nose, stifling a dismayed groan as she realized she was probably face to face with him. If only the ground would open up and swallow her, then she could escape the trembling of her limbs, the frazzling adrenaline screaming through her veins and the heady, disarming and weightless feeling of being so close to a man. This was, pathetically, the closest she had ever come to lying with someone. _What a farce._ Once, when they were both giggly with wine, Lisette had convinced Henri to show her his… _thing_. She wasn't proud of it, she winced at the memory, but they were teenagers. Her curiosity was rampant, convincingly so. She remembered staring at it numbly as he stroked it to full arousal. Her head spun from the wine and from seeing something so completely bizarre and forbidden. It didn't look at all how she expected. Kind of small. Kind of disappointing. In her books it was always throbbing manhood this, pulsing scepter that… This didn't look anything like any scepter Lisette had ever seen. The wonders of fiction, she mused dryly.

"Do you want to… to touch it?" he had asked, slurring his speech.

_ Absolutely not._

"I-I suppose."

And she had, and it didn't _feel_ like anything she expected either. A fascinating combination of inflexible and velvety… _Why_ was she thinking about this? This was not the time to be thinking about… manhoods. This was the time to pull her head out of her ass and come up with a solution. And fast. Lisette held in a furious sigh. Her body ached from tension. How had she managed to fuck this one up so exquisitely?

A hand dangled down from the bed. Lisette stared at it, convinced his fingertips would start shooting venom. But he only wanted a book. That was a relief. Wait. Stop. A book. One of _her_ books?

_ Quel développement._

For a horrifying moment, Lisette wondered if Cullen could speak Orlesian. No, that didn't make any sense. He could hardly say "mademoiselle" without having a stroke. Lisette strained her ears. She could hear pages fluttering rapidly, then pauses, then more fluttering and little grunts of concentration coming at ten second intervals. Maker's breath, he was _translating_. There were two distinct sounds – the soft, worn pages of her book, and the crisper fluttering of what must have been a dictionary. Her heart gave a little jerk. It was… sweet. Surprising, but, well, _sweet_.

Lisette bit down softly on her lower lip. So this was why he hadn't turned her in or burned the books. He was learning Orlesian, or at least _trying_ to. Admittedly, learning out of those books was sort of an idiotic idea, but it probably made the learning process more fun. Why not spice up your education with a healthy dose of sex? Cheeky boy. Make that cheeky _Templar_ boy. That must be a loose interpretation of his vows he was working with. Then he started mumbling and it was just too good to be true, because Lisette could actually _hear_ him trying out the words. His accent was _so bad_, but unbelievably adorable at the same time, and her chest was going to explode from the utterly heartbreaking way he stuttered over the pronunciation.

"La f-fame…"

La fame? What in the world did he…

"_Hunger_?" He sounded slightly breathless and upset.

Lisette covered her mouth with both hands. Oh. _La faim_. She wondered what would happen if she slid out from under the mattress and calmly said, "_Actually_, Cullen, it's _la faim_. Like 'feh.' Just drop the mm sound entirely." On second thought, that probably wouldn't go over so well. On the upside though, he might die of fright and give Lisette a way to escape.

He stammered over a few more words, slaughtering the vowels with impressive consistency. And Maker, he'd picked a juicy page. Poor thing. Cullen was probably reading around fifty-three or fifty-two, if memory served. Lisette wished she had gotten an education like this when she first began school. That would've made the long days infinitely more bearable.

After a while he went sort of quiet and the entire bed began to subtly vibrate. Was he… crying? No, he wasn't making any sounds. If the blood would just stop pooling in her ears, Lisette might be able to figure out if he was asleep yet or not. But no, not asleep, because the mattress was _definitely_ moving now. _Oh Maker, he's not… Is he? He is. He most certainly is._ Little grunting sounds drifted down from the crack against the wall. The bed frame creaked, the legs scratching back and forth against the stones. She could hear vividly now some kind of pained moaning and it was rough and ragged and so deep in his chest… His chest…

_Lisette you are not joining in, you miserable harlot. This is not arousing. Did you hear me? Not. Arousing. He's too old, too… Stuffy! He's a Templar, for Maker's sake, that means ew and creepy and __**off limits**__._

She kept perfectly still, holding her palms over her open mouth as Cullen continued bouncing around on the mattress. She wanted to laugh or maybe cry, both felt equally tempting. But that sound coming out of him... It was mesmerizing. It filled her ears and spread a curious, liquid warmth across her chest. His breaths were coming in time with his thrusts, which she now realized really _were_ thrusts, individual, a steady rhythm that was beginning to pick up speed. This was mortifying. Awful. So why did she want so badly to crawl out over the cold stones and slip in beside him? It was the sound she decided, the delicious, masculine force of his effort. And then he started going faster and Lisette wondered if the frame would hold him and she shut her eyes as a terrible realization dawned...

Torment. It wasn't pleasure he was feeling, but pain. Something like a keen died in his throat. The bed stopped moving. She listened to his breathing and heard the slight, tell-tale hitch. Lisette felt suddenly monstrous, as if she had hurt him somehow. She shouldn't have been there. She was invading, _trespassing_. And her hands were hot now, hot and wet because at some point she had begun weeping for him silently.

What could possibly hurt so much? And why did she want so badly to help?


	6. Six

**Six**

*

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

*

Cullen's world was spinning wildly out of control.

While he was busy destroying any semblance of pride or self control, the Tower was in an uproar over a proposal that had been brought before First Enchanter Irving. The Orlesians, apparently, wanted more say in how things were done in the Tower. They felt Irving was not accurately representing their interests, and that it would make more sense to have the First Enchanter position split into a joint appointment, with one First Enchanter from each faction, in order to assure both Fereldan and Orlesian voices were heard.

Cullen had this all from Wynne, who tracked him down early the next morning. Cullen was still reeling from his eventful evening and trying to shake off the embarrassment of waking to damp sheets and his face plastered against the pages of an obscene Orlesian romance. He spent the morning scrubbing at his cheek until all signs of ink transfer were scoured from his face, because the absolute last thing he needed was Greagoir to find a backward transcription of Rosamund and Bertrand's vulgar exploits stamped across his cheek. Though how fitting would that be? Stained by his misstep, not just spiritually but _physically_. In Cullen's sorrow-filled mind, he believed he deserved such a punishment. Never mind that; the Maker would find a way to suitably castigate him soon enough.

Wynne shocked him by dropping down beside him at breakfast, ignoring the Templars who shot her nervous glances as she sidled up to Cullen. Cullen stopped with his orange slice halfway to his lips.

"Have you _heard_?" she whispered furiously.

"Heard what?" Cullen asked, uneasy.

"Irving… He's… I don't know what he'll do. The Orlesians have backed him into a corner. They're demanding he share the responsibilities of First Enchanter." She passed a shaking hand over her eyes. "It's a disaster."

Cullen chewed his orange. It was tasteless. "And if he refuses?"

"I really don't think that would be wise," Wynne said quickly. "He can only hold them off for so long. He's sent word to Denerim, but Maker knows if they can do anything. And by the time the message reaches them…"

"He could have an uprising on his hands." Cullen's throat tightened. This hit too close to home. He had a vivid, seething memory of Uldred and his damnable followers sweeping through the Tower, destroying everything in their path. It took only the slightest bit of tension to turn a tough situation into an all-out bloodbath. Cullen winced. He should have seen this coming. He should have been paying closer attention. "Greagoir will tighten the watches. We won't let them start anything."

"I hope so," Wynne said, shaking her head. "And I should apologize. I've been so distracted with all this Orlesian nonsense I forgot entirely to watch that apprentice you mentioned. She survived her Harrowing, did she not?"

Cullen waved away her apology. "She's behaving. There have been no more incidents."

"I wish I could say the same for her mentor," Wynne muttered.

Cullen's grip tightened around his mug of tea. "Didier? Is he behind this?"

"I have no proof… They're presenting a solid face. According to them, no one mage is behind it. But I have my doubts." She sighed, picking at her oatmeal. A tendril of white hair swung in front of her lowered eyes. "This could destroy us for good, Cullen. Another upheaval so soon… It's… It's unthinkable."

"It won't happen," Cullen said, grabbing her hand. He let go immediately, but he saw a flicker of a smile pass over her weathered face. "I'll see what I can find out."

"Thank you, Cullen." She stood, shooting an exasperated look at the other Templars as if to say, "Yes, yes, I'm _going_."

Cullen couldn't remember the last time a mage had sat down at the Templar table. Probably because no mage ever had. His hand shook as he sipped his tea. Without meaning to, he glanced at the Orlesian table. Didier was there, stirring his coffee with his pinky high in the air, but there was no sign of Lisette. It wasn't like her to miss breakfast. Cullen shuddered, trying to shut out all acknowledgement of the slight tenderness in his groin. He hadn't done _that_ in years, and while he felt immeasurably more relaxed in some ways, he felt tense and jumpy in others. His _body_ was telling him to do it again while his _mind_ insisted he never repeat it and his _heart_ begged him to do it with someone else. Those three separate interests warring within were going to tear him apart. Cullen cleared his throat and sank his spoon into his gruel.

_Hunger_.

No.

His heart gave a strange tug. He looked up to see Lisette trotting into the dining hall. How had he _known_? The flashes of sunlight straining through the cracks in the covered windows ran like fluttering gold fingertips over her face. She looked tired, puffy, as if she hadn't slept. Cullen tore his eyes away and forced down a cold spoonful of gruel. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her sit next to Didier. At once, the Orlesian man launched into a rowdy joke, gesturing with his big, spindly hands, his baggy sleeves flying all over the place. Lisette had nothing but a tiny, apathetic smile for him. _Good girl. _She smiled at the cook as he brought out something special for her. Cullen squinted. It was a little cake dusted with candied walnuts and drizzled with melted chocolate. At once, the table erupted with song, the mages and enchanters clapping and laughing as they sang something that sounded like "Joy-o anniversair."

But Cullen wasn't an idiot. He knew the tune. It was the same melody they used in Ferelden. Happy birthday. Lisette blushed and laughed, Didier swinging into her with his shoulder to get her into the spirit of things. But she didn't look particularly happy. Just uncomfortable. Or distracted. Her head was somewhere else. Cullen's heart sank. Nobody should look like that on their birthday. Lisette thanked them all as the song died down and the rest of the dining hall stopped staring. She nibbled at her miniature cake, a smudge of chocolate smeared across her upper lip. Cullen would not think about how nice it would be to kiss that stain and feel her lips and find out, once and for all, what she tasted like. Discovering what chocolate was like wouldn't be so bad either.

Cullen flushed. She was looking at him over the lumpy surface of her cake. His heart picked up speed. Why couldn't he look away? Lisette had pinned him. She lowered the confection an inch, her own cheeks growing pink as she brought her forefinger to her mouth and carefully wiped away the chocolate. Then she laughed shyly, not at him, but with him, as if they were sharing a private joke. Cullen glanced down at his breastplate, unprepared for how badly he wanted to fire himself across the room and into her lap. _Be a man_. He glanced back up in time to see her take another tentative bite, a walnut dropping into her lap. She stared down at it, mildly surprised, as if the candied nut had outwitted her somehow. Then it was Cullen's turn to chuckle. He hid it behind his gauntlet. He didn't want the others to see. Just her.

It took him the rest of breakfast to remember that he wasn't supposed to be laughing. He was supposed to be focusing on the mounting tension in the Tower. Mounting tension. _Maker's mercy, not like that. _The Orlesians were orchestrating a coup, and he wasn't helping matters by turning into a helpless flirt. _One orgasm and you're acting like she's your sweetheart. This is wrong. Not allowed. You took vows… Were you not paying attention? She reads __**graphic**__ books. She won't be satisfied with a chaste, spiritual friendship. This is a trap. A trap that you are willingly walking into..._

Cullen wondered if maybe the ringing in his ears was right. What if she was part of the Orlesian's plot to overthrow Irving? What if she was _supposed_ to seduce the Templars, distract them while the enchanters plotted and advanced their devious ambitions? No, that smile… It was genuine. You couldn't fake that kind of innocent joy.

Lisette stood and padded over to the kitchens, poking her head around the corner to shout something at the cook in Orlesian. Then she emerged, touched Didier on the shoulder, whispered in his ear and left the dining hall. Cullen half-expected Didier to get up and follow her, but instead he stayed, striking up a conversation with the enchanter sitting across from him. Cullen stood up before he knew quite what he was doing. A thick, vibrating thread inside of him was calling for action. And like a dolt, he was listening to it. _You're pathetic_. His real thoughts, his _righteous_ thoughts, were drowned out by the primal thrumming beneath his breastplate. Something had woken up inside of him, a primordial and long-forgotten beast rousing from its long, peaceful slumber. The agony and pure liquid fire of the previous night's _transgression_ would not, it seemed, be ignored.

Cullen was shocked by how nice it felt to just act unpredictably. He hadn't finished his tea. That was different. He hadn't stuck around to chat with Bryce. That was different. He wasn't listening to the rational voice in his head that said: turn back! That was… _sort of_ different. Cullen tracked her to the training hall, where she was already lost in the stacks, muttering under her breath as she searched for the book she wanted. What was he doing? What did he expect to happen? He couldn't very well march up behind her and surprise her by whispering something tantalizing in her ear. Except that was exactly what he did. Well, almost.

He got as far as the getting up behind her part, then he lost momentum and instead of leaning down to say something, reached over her head to retrieve the book she was on straining tiptoes to reach. Lisette gasped, falling forward against the shelves as Cullen's body stretched over her. He cursed his wretched armor, the dome of his breastplate sliding gently against her spine. Lisette turned, flattening herself against the books. But it didn't matter. That tiny moment was enough to feel the heat radiating off of her shoulders and catch the thrilling scent of flowers all over her hair. Now that he had her undivided attention, Cullen panicked, not sure what to do with his face. He settled for a crooked smile and a furious, painful blush. Well, he didn't so much decide on the blush as it overtook his face like the world's fastest-acting rash. Then he held out the book to her. Lisette was frozen. He shook the book a little, as if she were a dog and it was the fetching stick.

_ Idiot. Do something._

"Why didn't you tell me it was your birthday?"

_ Not really what I had in mind. Accusations are __**so**__ romantic._

Lisette's eyes widened. She snorted, a little indignant as she searched for words. "I'm sorry – was I supposed to?"

"I… No." _Smooth_. "But… anyway… Happy birthday."

Lisette took the book. Cullen turned to go. Well, that was a disaster. He cursed his fumbling stupidity as he shuffled a few steps. _Are you really giving up so easily? Pitiful_. The image of a familiar-looking man in his thirties desperately humping his bed clothes while _crying_ sprang instantly to mind. Maker strike him down, he was going to at least test his limits, _try_ to speak to a woman without shooting himself directly in the foot. Maybe he just needed a tiny confidence boost to make things normal again. Once he proved that he could simply converse casually he could get back to the business of being a good Templar again. Or so he hoped.

Cullen turned on his heel, the metal of his boot making a spine-tingling screech on the stones. He winced and then stumbled back toward her. She was gaping at him, clutching the book to her chest for dear life. Her lips formed a perfect, pink O. Since when was she afraid of _him_? _Say something, she's staring_.

"Are you… well?" He cleared his throat.

"I… believe so. Why? Are you?"

"Well, you just look… A little tired or… no… wait…"

"I look _tired_?" Lisette frowned, her bottom lip turning out in a pout. Cullen scrambled to remake the ground he had just squandered. _Blundering fool_. No, blundering didn't quite cover it.

"No, I thought… I thought perhaps you weren't feeling well." _Dig up. Up!_ Cullen hurried on before she could compose a scathing response. "It's… difficult, adjusting to things here and I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay. Sometimes it's… intense. You're Harrowing went so well and I wanted to see if you were… um… still_… _uh_,_ _well_."

Cullen wondered if this was what it was like to watch a city burn to the ground. He also wondered how many full-grown brontos could fit comfortably through his clumsy pauses.

"I'm really… mucking this up, aren't I?" Cullen muttered bitterly, expelling a gigantic breath. To his surprise, Lisette giggled, nodding with something like relief. The air seemed to clear between them, the tension vanishing.

"I'm well," she said at last. Maker, that accent of hers was turning his knees to pudding. "Thank you, Cullen, for asking."

_ Say that again. Say my name again…_

"And do you… need directions to the storeroom?" He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "I hear it's very hard to find." Maybe this flirting thing wasn't so hard after all. Say what you're thinking, not what you think sounds _right_.

"No," she said softly, glancing down at her book. Then she looked up at him, her big blue eyes sparkling and vast and holding answers to questions he hadn't even asked yet, and Cullen felt his chest cave in as she murmured sweetly, "I think I've found just what I was looking for."

* * *

Lisette decided not to take back her books.

She _wanted_ to and, oh, it was probably frightfully stupid of her to go to all that trouble and just _leave_ them behind, but she thought maybe… that maybe he needed them more than she did. _Charity? Are you serious? That's a stretch_. But Lisette had her reasons. Honestly, what kind of sexual education did a Templar get, anyway? Were they taught all the clinical ins and outs and then told, "But don't you ever let us catch you doing that!" That seemed awfully hypocritical. And downright _mean_.

These were the thoughts that zipped like fiery sprinting demons through her head as she oh-so-carefully slid out from under Cullen's bed and sort of snaked across the freezing cold floor to the door. Apparently his little… _event_ had triggered some kind of coma, because he fell asleep almost the instant he was finished. Regardless, Lisette waited half an hour to make sure he was really and truly out for good. He didn't snore, which was nice, but she could hear the deep, even breathing of someone thoroughly entrenched in dreams. Not that it was important that a man not snore, though Lisette could never consider loving one who did.

_ And that's relevant how?_

She hazarded casting a tiny muffling spell on the door as she zipped out and shut it behind her. Then she faced the gauntlet of actually making it back to her chambers without being discovered. She pointedly ignored the unwelcome pang of regret she felt as she sank into her invisibility spell and sped out of the Templar wing. That was a very close call. There was nothing at all to regret except her utter failure to retrieve her books. Forget his warm, inviting smell, the way he slept with his mouth hanging wide open and his face smooshed into her book, the little errant curl that fell over his forehead… And his hand clutched the pillow. His hands were big, thick with tendons, and they looked incredibly strong…

These were details. Incredibly unimportant, wildly forgettable details.

What was not actually a detail, was her lunatic idea to abandon the books altogether. She lectured herself sternly as she waited an entire bloody hour for a random Templar to chance by and pull open the door leading out to the corridor. She couldn't very well open it herself. The two sentries outside would probably question the magical fog opening securely shut doors. What exactly had she gained on this absurdly risky trip? Nothing. Nothing except a sharp tension between her shoulder blades and a few years off her lifespan from the sheer terror of being so close to certain death.

Still, if she _had_ taken the books, Cullen would notice. He was reading them. He would make the obvious connection between the books _being_ there and _not_ being there and the specific night on which this mysterious vanishing act occurred. Then he would remember that whole _having sex with the bed_ thing and either kill her from the shame of it all or kill them _both_.

No, better to let him do whatever it was he was doing with her books than expose them both to that kind of awkward scrutiny. And she really did feel bad about it. How was Lisette supposed to know he would start doing _that_ while she was under the bed? That was never part of the plan. And now, thanks to Cullen and his industrious hips, she couldn't get the rhythm of his deep, throaty breaths out of her head. She walked to that rhythm, realized she was doing so, and almost ran into a wall as she tried to correct her step.

_Enjoy my books, arsehole, do please try to keep your sticky fingers away from the pages._

Lisette shook her head as she dashed into her chambers at last and flung off her robe. She climbed into bed, depressed to find it was later than she thought. The bed felt big and cold and empty. Her back throbbed from lying on the hard floor. No matter how she tried to position herself, she closed her eyes and saw Cullen and heard his frantic panting. The poor man… To be sworn to celibacy, to be reduced to such desperation from a _book_. A book he could hardly read, no less. _Le Chevalier_ was racy, sure, but Maker, that was taking it very, very far.

_ Uh-huh, because a spotless angel like you didn't frig yourself after that exact same chapter._

Which was so not the point.

Maybe Templars were never told _anything_. Any knowledge they acquired on the subject of sex was counter to their oaths anyway, so it was almost certainly comprised of rumors and hearsay. Lisette growled, completely unable to sleep. Suddenly, she was too furious to even close her eyes. She was filled with rage at the… at the _injustice_ of it all! Hamstrung by a religion that not only wanted to own their bodies but bind them to addiction and lifelong service... It was unconscionable. At least Lisette got to shoot fire balls out of her fingertips. That was a pretty good reward for a cloistered life. What did Templars get? A signing bonus? Purple skirts? _Rosy feelings?_

Lisette sighed, coming to the conclusion that she was not going to get any sleep at all. Something unsettling and instantaneous had happened the moment she left Cullen's room and continued on with her life. She was finding out that it was not a happy sort of something. In fact, it was incredibly distracting and embarrassing. She wanted to blame him, but of course she was also partially responsible. Lisette had, after all, sneaked into his room and rolled underneath his bed. It's not as if he _wanted_ her there or sent an invitation. _Please join me at midnight to listen while I masturbate furiously into my blankies._

No, she definitely missed that message if he sent it.

Nope. No sleep possible. As soon as her eyelids so much as drooped she heard his groans of passion _right_ next to her ear. That was helpful. This was not how she hoped to learn the finer points of sex. She had always imagined a darkened corner somewhere, her lips bruised from kissing and, most importantly, they would actually be touching and face to face and not separated by a mattress and ten thousand rules and regulations, all of which stipulated a mage and a Templar must never, ever touch, unless of course it was the Templar's sword touching the mage's entrails.

So why in the Maker's name was she inexplicably warm all over. It was cold in the room, chilly enough to warrant two thick blankets, but her skin was aflame. There was an aspect of picturing his totally forbidden arms around her that was deeply and wickedly _hot_. This was the stuff the best Orlesian romances were built upon. It could never happen, so there was no harm in letting her fingers trail down her flat stomach to the warm, suspiciously wet crux between her thighs. Kissing Cullen and feeling the rasp of his whiskers was impossible, so picturing it happening in her big, empty bed was totally benign. Just a fantasy. Just a dream.

At some point, she fell asleep. When she woke, her hand was still sandwiched between her legs but she felt no less frustrated or confused. She also threw herself out of bed, late for breakfast and remembering only then that it was her bloody _birthday_. Didier would wonder what was the matter with her if she didn't high-tail it down to the dining hall and put in a good showing. Her pulse raced as she dressed and splashed water on her face and scrubbed the shameful scent of her own sex from her hands.

She was out of breath when she reached the dining hall, and devastated to find that the mere sight of Cullen made her heart plummet to her toes. _Templar, Templar, Templar_, she chanted to herself as she breezed by his table, _impossible, impossible, impossible_. Somehow, that only made her face warmer. Didier started talking about something inane as she sat down to eat. Then the cook was bursting out of the kitchen to give her an adorable little cake and everyone was singing and laughing. And it didn't feel right or fun until she glanced up and saw Cullen watching her. Studying her. It wasn't fair the way her blood ignited at his smoldering stare. It wasn't fair that the only word to form in her dim, foggy head was _yearning_.

_La faim_.

Hunger.

With all eyes on her, she tried the pastry. It was excellent, flaky and delicate and sweet, and Cullen seemed to smirk at her as she sheepishly wiped at her chocolate-covered face. Was he laughing at her? No, just laughing. Cheek boy. He didn't smile very often, did he? She couldn't remember the last time she had seen it. Then she took another bite, putting on a show for him, and a traitor walnut spoiled her fun and tumbled into her lap. She looked at it, betrayed, and then faintly heard Cullen's deep, rumbling laugh.

Lisette wondered if he felt it, too - the dull ache where real happiness ought to go. She was sharing this special birthday morning with dozens of people, but nobody except Cullen seemed to notice that she was so very alone. It was killing her, knowing that he was lonely too. She had heard it in his rasping sighs, the way he bucked so furiously in the cold, empty solitude of his cell, nobody to touch him, nobody to say it was okay to experience pleasure. There was passion buried somewhere inside of him, and the Chantry had done its best to beat it out of him, make him ashamed of his own impulses, his own beautiful body. Beautiful_. Was he beautiful?_ Lisette secretly glanced at him. That irresistible little mole... The thickness of his lashes… _Yes_. _Beautiful_. He had passion to give and so did she, but nobody wanted to acknowledge it. The whole charade became unbearable and Lisette panicked. She had to go. She was being crushed. She couldn't sit there anymore willingly participating in a hideous lie. _We're all smiling, happy, smiling happy prisoners._

Lisette remembered to thank Orsene for the pastry and she made some vague promise about finding Didier later for a duel, and then she fled. The training hall seemed like the safest place. Nobody would have any business there so early in the morning. Lisette run-walked to the training hall and wandered into a maze of bookshelves, staring blankly at the titles, weary and disoriented. Then she noticed one on Orlesian battle incantations. It was just out of reach. Typical. Sometimes she loathed being so short.

Without warning, something was pressing into her from behind, a cold, inflexible pressure. Lisette gasped. His breath rushed around her and Lisette knew it was _him_. This was so bold, so abrupt… Had he known she was there beneath his bed? No, it was impossible. But something had changed in him. She felt trapped, enclosed, and helpless to protest his sudden heat and the warm breath in her ear that seemed to sear a line straight down to her navel. She wanted more of it, and then he was gone, handing her the book and muttering, back to his old shy self.

_Don't do that, Cullen. I know you're in there. Come back._

There was a secret sword hidden inside of him. Lisette wondered if he would ever have the bravery to wield it. It didn't seem like he would, as he accidentally insulted her and then stammered through some nonsense about hoping she had settled in alright – or "well" to reiterate his incredibly overused word of choice. And then he tried to leave, stymied, and before she could crack the book in her arms he was turning back to try again. It took him some time to work back up to conversation-level intelligence, and then it happened. He broke. The wall shattered.

"I'm really… mucking this up, aren't I?"

Lisette couldn't believe how relieved she was to hear those simple, sweet words. Honest words. She laughed, elated at this forward movement, and decided to end his suffering and speak up.

"I'm well." That shy, little boy smile was going to kill her. "Thank you, Cullen, for asking."

"And do you… need directions to the storeroom?" Maker above, was he actually _flirting_ now? Legitimate, eyebrows in the air, sexy voice flirting? "I hear it's very hard to find."

He was. Lisette took a second to think up something appropriately coquettish. He had earned it, after all. Cullen was making her blush, and not because he was stuttering at her or stealing her things, but because he was really making her smile.

"No," she said, "I think I've found just what I was looking for."

Lisette wondered if there had ever in the history of the world been an instant so blatantly marked: Moment Of Truth. She recognized its significance buried in the mundane, dusty air of the silent training hall. If she didn't reach out and grasp that moment, it might never come again. Some people went their entire lives without having even one of these rare, cosmic confluences of events. She _knew_ this moment. This was when Leduc kissed Colette behind the fountain during her ill-fated wedding to the Baron, this was when Bertrand cut down forty men to steal one glance from Rosamund, and this was when Lisette Odille, twenty years old, a newly-Harrowed mage, flung herself forward and kissed the Templar Cullen squarely on the lips.


	7. Seven

**Seven**

**Note**: Thanks should be given to Catherine Millet and her book _The Sexual Life of Catherine M_ for the inspiration for some of the rather French bits below. Please review if you're enjoying the story, which I sincerely hope you are…

*

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.

-Charles Schulz

*

Once, when Cullen was just a boy - before his mother died - a wealthy merchant moved to their village. The merchant was taken with Cullen's mother right away and for a while Cullen believed he would have a new father, a father to replace the one he had never met. He remembered the way his mother smiled, and how at night before bed, she would tell him about all the new toys he would have and the big, beautiful house they would build. For those few days, Cullen thought life was going to start being really good. They would take him to a physician and find a way to make him talk right. Mum would keep smiling. But the merchant stopped coming around. His mother stopped smiling and Cullen never got those new toys or that big house, and they could never afford to take him to a physician…

But for those few short days, his little world was filled with light and sound and endless possibilities.

Which was exactly how he felt with Lisette's lips pressed against his. His senses were suddenly sharp, overwhelming, and his focus was reduced to the intense pleasure of her warm, soft lips and the wet little tongue that was sneaking into his mouth. He tasted something bitter and intriguing on her tongue, chocolate maybe? Was that what it tasted like? Cullen didn't care. He could only think how feather-light and hot his chest felt. How he had never in his life experienced a sensation like the one bubbling in his brain? He was a cauldron, too full, overheating. He tipped his head to the side, seeking more, seeking everything. And her tongue. _Maker's light_, her tongue. Lisette was teasing his own tongue into action, and Cullen had to twist his fists into the fabric of his kilt to keep from grabbing her shoulders. Two velvety, delicate hands were cupping his jaw, just a ghost of a touch, but more than enough to knock the wind out of his lungs.

It took a long time, too long, for reality to shoulder its way back into his mind. This was wrong, inappropriate… _forbidden_. And she was an _Orlesian_ and the Orlesians were trying to rip the Tower apart and Greagoir needed him and Wynne needed him and Irving needed him. Everyone needed him to be strong. And he was failing. Failing his superiors. Failing the Maker. Cullen reeled back, breathing hard, putting up a hand to keep her from kissing him again.

Cullen blinked at her, feeling wild and undone, and saw that her lips were slightly darker than before. Had he done that? Cullen stammered his way through, "W-what was that?"

Lisette touched her bottom lip with her forefinger and shrugged. "A beetroot? Wait! No. A kiss?"

"Y-You're making fun of me."

"_You_ asked." She laughed, and then noticed he wasn't exactly hopping up and down with excitement and her jubilant smile faltered.

"W-why did you do that?" Cullen whispered. He could feel the blood streaming out of his face. His hands were shaking as if he had just dived into an ice water bath and the headache building behind his eyes was going to blind him any second…

"You were _flirting_ with me," Lisette replied. Her humor was failing. He could see the worry beginning to crease her brow. This was not the reaction she had hoped for.

"I was not… I would never…"

"Flirt? Because you were. Shamelessly, in fact."

Well that wasn't possible. Cullen never did _anything_ shamelessly. He glanced at her face, her hands, her feet… He wasn't even sure he knew where he was. Something terrible had just happened. He had crossed a line. This had all started with that one little book of hers and a few harmless words and ultimately resulted in this… this… this complete moral _bankruptcy_. The time to go back was now, before things got out of hand, before he managed to further disgrace his vows. It was just a kiss. A kiss was not the end of the world. If he prayed hard enough, if he swore to be _better_, no – _stronger_ - then perhaps it could just be forgotten. Now was the time to go back and never waver.

"We can't ever do that again," he said hoarsely. Lisette flinched as if punctured by an invisible arrow. Her blue eyes were sparkling more than usual, filling with tears.

"But, Cullen…"

"No. Never again."

Cullen watched her face fall, watched her scramble to keep her emotions in check. He thought perhaps she might cry, but then she rallied and picked up the book she had dropped in her haste to kiss him. This had to be some sort of record. From kissing to hatred in twenty seconds flat. Lisette hugged the book to her chest and took two slow, tentative steps back, still facing him. She was being generous, giving him a chance to apologize. But Cullen couldn't find the words… He couldn't find anything at all. He was slipping, drowning… And his chest was _burning_.

Then at last she turned, and Cullen spoke too late. She was already out the door when he marshaled his voice.

"Lisette… _Wait_."

It was then that he realized that was probably her first kiss. It was her first kiss and he had, he had…

_Ruined it?_

Cullen winced, cold all over. He had done the right thing, said the right things, so why did he feel so hopelessly unhappy? The righteous path ought to fill him with joy and peace, but his heart was trying to claw its way out of his mouth. He felt mean. Monstrous. Who did he think he was fooling? _He_ wasn't flirting with _her_? _Of course_ he had been flirting with her. This was entirely his fault. He had followed her to the training hall, helped her reach that book, _tempted_ her. She was so young, and under no oaths… She couldn't be expected to choose the high road, walk the exalted path. _He_ was supposed to take the high road. He was a Templar, unshakeable in faith and will, and he had laid the trail of crumbs and devoured her when she followed, _punished_ her for simply following his lead. And why was he trembling? Why did he want to slam his head against the wall until the doubts stopped rushing in every direction and his brains leaked out of his ears? There shouldn't be doubts. Kissing bad. Temptation bad. All of it – _bad_. And yet this moment felt far worse than when they were kissing. The kiss had been… transcendent, sweet, _simple_. This was like being torn in six different directions at once...

Chapel. _Now_.

Somebody, Bryce probably, tried to stop him as he dashed to the Maker's shrine. But Cullen wasn't stopping for anyone or anything. Unless the Tower was literally falling down around him, he would spend the next hour on his knees. And he did, secretly pleased when the pain in his joints became almost too sharp to bear. He deserved punishment. He deserved to suffer.

The candles warmed his face and Cullen nearly broke again, the faint heat reminding him of Lisette's lips. But he resisted the urge to dwell on such things. The smell of the familiar beeswax candles reminded him of the holy peace of the chapel, the radiance of the divine. Here, every stone and crack was well-known. Here he had prayed day in and day out. Cullen had been celibate all his life, pure of thought since early adolescence… He would not now throw away that magnificent achievement by letting a pretty young girl dissolve his self-control. A mere handful of physical pleasures were not worth the destruction of a lifetime of piety.

"Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter," Cullen whispered frantically, "Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just."

Champions of the just. _Yes_. That was what he wanted to be. That's what he _had_ been. Perhaps this was a natural turning point in his life. He was getting older. The life of the Templar couldn't possibly be a perfectly straight road. No, there would be obstacles, obstructions, and it was his duty to overcome them. It was natural to want things, to be curious about women, family, freedom… But these were facets of another life altogether. A mundane man was rewarded with a faithful, loving wife and healthy children; a Templar received far greater gifts – the promise of an afterlife more sweet and gratifying than all the wives and children in the world combined. Secular joys must never, never take the place of spiritual clarity.

He had been weak, it was true, but weakness was not permanent. On his knees, the chapel humming with its habitual warm silence, Cullen forced himself to remember the screams of his brothers, their undoing at the hands of demons and temptresses. Mental fortitude was the only sure guard against such wicked abominations. Behind his closed eyes, Cullen saw again the blood running across the stones, diverting into rivulets in the mortar like a thousand coursing rivers. He heard Mallory shout to him, pleading, as she was overwhelmed, her magical powers too great a lure, her body becoming nothing but a tool of evil. And he remembered the tremendous noise of it all, how his head rang inside his helmet as bursts of fire erupted in every corner, lightning streaked across the ceiling, and mages fell one after another, transforming, _twisting_… Coming for him.

_Lisette. It's for your own good._

At least he would be safe for the time being. His frosty response to her kiss would probably mean she never spoke to him again. And so he would not be tempted and she would be protected from corruption and the wandering eyes of demons.

Cullen stood at last an hour later, refreshed, recharged. His spiritual compass was pointing confidently in the right direction again. Balance was restored. The kiss would be forgotten.

* * *

The heat wave struck the Tower the following week.

Unseasonably warm spring weather coupled with the no open-window policy of the Circle of Magi meant living conditions plummeted, brutal and trying. Students fainted during class. The older enchanters stayed abed until evening came and cooled the rooms, too frail to chance a tumble down the stairs if a dizzy spell hit. Everyone else endured as best they could. The Templars suffered the brunt of the discomfort. The Knight-Commander relaxed the rule on helmets to keep the sentries from passing out, but armor and swords were still to be worn at all times. The inclement weather seemed to dampen any plans the Orlesians intended to carry out. Lisette had this firsthand from Didier, who didn't have the patience for lessons while the heat soared. Their duels were infrequent and sloppy when they occurred. Lisette could hardly cast a single spell without panting and weaving.

She spent her days seeking out the coolest corners in the Tower. They were few and far between. Fortunately, there was no chance of running into Cullen. She had barely glimpsed him since their… encounter. He was never at meals, making Lisette assume he had adjusted his schedule to guarantee they never crossed paths. Lisette already knew his watch schedule from infiltrating his room, so she easily avoided him by planning her visits to the library and laboratory. In six days, she only saw him twice. Once, when he walked by an empty classroom she had commandeered to practice a shield spell, the other when she trooped down to breakfast earlier than usual and caught him on the way out. Both glimpses were equally uncomfortable. No matter how many times she explained to her heart that wanting him was preposterous, her yearning dreams persevered unchecked. Seeing him made her heart race and her palms sweat furiously. This was troublesome, since more than one Templar had curly blondish hair, and from behind they tended to look the same. She had mistaken others for Cullen several times, giving herself unwelcome jolts of pain and elation at the most inconvenient times.

Her focus suffered. The heat didn't help, but she knew the real culprit was Cullen. His reaction had stung. And her inability to let it go smarted even deeper. _ Well what did you expect, Lisette? He's a Templar, for the Maker's sake! He can't sweep you out of the Tower and carry you off into the sunset. He behaved exactly the way a Templar should._

It didn't matter. She hated him. She burned for him. She couldn't have him.

There was nothing to do but get on with life and hope that the balm of time would heal her aching heart. They would be doomed to tenaciously avoid each other for the rest of their lives.

Day five of the Great Immolation found Lisette bustling from darkened room to darkened room, desperate for a cooling breeze. Instead of tapering off, the heat wave only became worse. Tempers ran hot, but nobody had the energy to do anything about their short fuses. Mages and Templars alike slumped against the tables at meals and plodded, sapped and sweaty, down the stuffy, still corridors. Classes were cancelled completely when the youngest apprentices began to tumble out of their seats with alarming frequency. Lisette woke every morning to soaking wet bed sheets and sticky, sluggish limbs.

Finding a cross-breeze in the Tower was like stumbling across a waterfall in the desert; you had a better chance of finding a virgin in a whorehouse.

Lisette couldn't endure another day of it. In Orlais they called spells like this _le Souffle_, the Breath, as if the whole sky held in a gasp and there would be no relief until that breath was expelled, which usually meant a cathartic storm and plenty of rain. She had never experienced _un Souffle_ this extreme. She could only hope it would abate soon and the Tower would be returned to its usual dizzying industriousness. But until then, Lisette would spend every waking minute chasing an elusive breeze. She felt it sometimes at night. A tiny, trickling airstream would wind through her quarters, teasing her in sleep, vanishing in the morning. The windows were locked tight and shuttered, but perhaps there was a cracked hinge somewhere that could be prodded to let in a little fresh air.

There was still one empty room where no mages currently lived. Instead of spreading out the mages between the empty quarters, Irving encouraged the residents to share living spaces and get to know each other. Lisette had to disagree, but her roommate, Tilly, was quiet and unassuming and almost never about. This suited Lisette just fine. The empty mage quarters felt a bit fresher than the library and the training hall, and Lisette thought perhaps she had at last found the solace she sought. She padded to the southwest alcove, where an empty bed waited, made up and ready for whoever should need it. Creepy, she thought, that it was just sitting there. There was a desk, too with candles and blown glass lantern. Above that, there was a darkened window, long ago boarded over with an elaborately painted barricade. In the darkened, cavernous room it was easy to see the little dusty spike of outside light that drifted down beneath a loose edge of the barricade.

Lisette grinned and tugged on the wooden slat. It wiggled and creaked and with another stiff yank it peeled up. She snaked her arm up under the gap and blindly groped for the window's latching mechanism. The damn thing had been shut for Maker only knows how long, so it took some serious prodding to switch the hammer forward. Lisette sighed with almost primal pleasure at the click of the lock. Gasping in anticipation, she pressed her knuckles against the window until it gave a shuddering squeal and inched open.

At once, the air around her shimmered, the dust of ages unsettled by the sudden presence of swirling, fresh air. It wasn't exactly a tornado, in fact it was just a pitiful little puff of a breeze, but it was so much better than the alternative. Lisette made space on the desk, tossing the unlit candle and lantern onto the bed before hoisting herself onto the table beside the window. Smirking, she pulled up the hem of her robes, letting the tiny spark of a breeze play across her bare, damp thighs. It was heaven.

While the crack of light and glimpse of fresh air offered Lisette just enough reading light, it did nothing to address the sweat slicked down her neck and back and chest. Even the Templars were too bedraggled in their armor to take much notice of the increasingly scanty fashion statements wandering the halls. Lisette had hemmed her lightest summer robe by hand, raising the bottom hem to just below the knee and removing the sleeves altogether. She added a scooping neckline and generous vent in the back. Even so, the breezy, crinkled silk garment felt like a fur-lined coat. And moisture had a way of collecting in the middle of her breasts, which was unbelievably uncomfortable and embarrassing. Luckily, no one was lucid enough to notice or stare. Even so, it was miserable to walk about in a perpetual state of _damp_.

Lisette kicked off her slippers, letting her feet dangle down over the desk and thump quietly against the drawers. She took up a book, settling in for a languorous, quiet read. Lisette sighed from the air that flowed in uneven spurts over her scorching skin. Balancing the book in her lap, she adjusted her ponytail, raising it higher on her head to keep the hair from settling against her slick neck. Then she searched for her place. Didier had recommended the book. It was from his private collection. Lisette wondered if the enchanters vetted his belongings or if he, being older and wiser, was immune to the indignities of being searched like a criminal.

The book was something called _Le Voyage d'Esprit_, and Lisette had reached chapter two after slogging through forty immeasurably boring pages of some Orlesian mage's ancestry. She still hadn't actually determined whether the book was a novel or historical account, it was that bloody impenetrable. Lisette stifled a yawn, embarking on chapter two with a decidedly blasé attitude toward the text. If it didn't pick up soon, she would have to forgo reading in favor of a nap.

Lisette noticed that whoever had set the letters for _Le Voyage d'Esprit_ had made a stylistic choice to change the shape and size of the words. Frowning, she flipped back a few pages. The letters definitely looked… different, as if from another book altogether. And Lisette looked at the heading for chapter two, which was not numbered at all, it simply said _Et Puis…_ - _And then_… Shrugging, she decided to find out just what in the world was going on with this bizarre book.

Lisette wished she hadn't.

_And Then…_

_And then he parted her. Her legs fell away, her body opening to him. There was, between them, a singular moment of shared understanding, the Love World unfolding and enfolding, inviting them to enter into the brotherhood-sisterhood of Those Who Had, as opposed to Those Who Had Not._

Lisette stared at the book as if it had sprouted horns and a tail. Her breath hitching, she checked the page before.

_The conflict between the two lasted many years, and the Libertarians won several notable victories, in spite of the favor shown to their opponents by the Orlesian administration—until finally the reconciliation of the two points of view was seen to be impossible, and the orders went their separate ways permanently._

_Uh_… _Okay?_

The orders went their separate ways and then legs began parting? Lisette wondered if this was perhaps part of some movement in Orlesian literature she had never heard of. That, or the change in the _appearance_ of the text indicated that they were not, in fact, from the same body of work. Someone had squeezed (ugh) naughty things into an historical text that was itself about as racy as a piece of toast. At once, Lisette wondered if this was Didier's doing or the work of some incredibly crafty bookmaker. The spine was flawless, untouched, which made her think someone had done this at an early stage in the binding process. Didier, it would seem, had connections.

She wasn't sure whether she was flattered or appalled.

_Prude_.

This was the worst kind of reading for a hot day. Lisette actually preferred the idea of bone dry historical facts. At least those didn't _increase_ the temperature of her blood. But how could she _not_ read on? This was the most interesting thing to happen to her since… since… that Gargantuan Mistake That Never Happened. Feeling wicked beyond words, Lisette peeled the book open, picking up where she had left off. She was doing perfectly fine until she reached a phrase that made the hairs on the back of her next stand on end.

_Having spoken the solicitous language of sensation before and with other women, he knew when to depress the flexible furrow between her arsehole and the beginnings of her cunt – as he expected, she was instantly subjugated. He laughed deeply to hear her nourishing moan of shock._

Lisette had never considered herself a prig, but something about the detached, almost clinical wording of the passage made her want to slam the book shut and hurl it out the window along with a big helping of projectile vomit. She wasn't sure if she wanted to plunge into a steamy fantasy or take a scouring bath. This wasn't romance. It wasn't even sex. It was… _dissection_.

Panicky, her eyes flickered down the page, just to make sure it wasn't _actually_ about dissection – which, thankfully, it was not – and her gaze accidentally caught on one singular word.

Hunger.

_Oh Maker, please tell me this is a horrific coincidence._

Her mind wandered the snaking mental path that always and inevitably led to Cullen.

_ Stop torturing yourself. You'll pop a blood vessel._

But it was too late, the image of him was there. Lisette closed the offending book and tossed it away onto the empty bed. She didn't want to hold it. It felt like a pile of searing coals in her hands. Her warm breath fanned out around her face as she leaned against the wall. Why did every tiny pleasure in life have to be ruined? Her favorite books? Confiscated. Her first kiss? Disastrous. Her tiny breeze? Soured. She wanted to scream in frustration. Her flesh didn't feel right. It was too sticky, too dreadfully _hot_, and she was sick and tired of being wet all day long. And now she was wet in another way, which only made things markedly shittier, and there was no way she was going to continue reading that ugly, excessive book, but the damage had already been done because when she closed her eyes she felt Cullen's lips pressing against hers…

The world spun. It was the heat, she decided, and not the memory of his firm, dexterous tongue sliding into her mouth that was making her lightheaded. She could feel the tickling rasp of his whiskers on her palms and press the steel tendons of his jaw. She held the luminous heat of his skin in the cradle of her hands. And with her eyes closed, it was easy to imagine that the kiss never ended, that his strong arms came around her and trapped her against his chest. She felt the unbending metal of his breastplate under her fingernails. Her hands wound into his hair, threading through the soft, sweat-slicked curls…

Lisette pulled one foot up onto the desk beside her bottom and reached beneath the hoisted hem of her robes. She rubbed two fingers against the increasing hum of her sex. She couldn't resist the urge. She couldn't resist _him_. In her imagination, Cullen's hand replaced hers and it was his large, calloused fingers that sought and teased, and it was his low, rumbling breath filling her ears. Sweat poured down her neck and into to the valley between her breasts. The heat was rising around her like a sweltering tide. It was embarrassing how quickly she found climax, banging her head back against the wall and forcing out a breathless, "Oh. _Cullen_."

Pained from hitting her head too hard and seeing stars, Lisette blinked into the murky, dusk-dim space of the room. There was a tall, broad shape where no tall, broad shape ought to be. Lisette lurched forward, too surprised to fix her hiked robe or collect her tumbling thoughts. She pitched forward off of the desk in fright, bashing her bare knee on the unforgiving stones waiting below. Lisette swore, reaching for her leg, which was already beginning to shine with blood. And as if that weren't bad enough, the tall, broad _ought-not-to-be-there_ shape shot forward at her moan of pain. It was no use pretending he didn't know _exactly_ what she was up to, so she didn't bother trying to force out any half-assed denials.

"You're late," Lisette muttered with a dark laugh. She glanced up in time to see a bead of sweat drop down his chin and ping against his armor. That uniquely forlorn expression of his had deepened to all-out despair. Carefully, he tilted her ankle forward until he could get a clear look at her scraped knee. He didn't smell much like a forest at that point. It was just sweat and all _his_, and it was no help at all to her pleasure-addled wits.

"How much did you see?" Lisette asked quietly. He stared at her wound, a muscle jumping by his temple. She was just glad it was too shadowy for her to see his initial stricken expression at finding her so… _intimately_ employed.

"A… A lot, I guess. This room is s-supposed to be empty… I heard noises, it's… my job, you know, to check these things…" _Is it also your job to stare silently until I make a complete fool of myself? _He wetted his lips nervously. "Can you walk?"

"It's a scrape. I'm fine. But will you please stay and talk with me?"

"I shouldn't."

"But you want to?" She stared at him, hoping something would shatter between them again. That infuriating, pious wall of his was back in place, diamond-hard and unwavering.

"I… shouldn't."

Lisette sighed. "Then please go."

Cullen hesitated, his gauntlet shaking as he tore his hand away from her leg. She instantly missed the cool relief of the steel. She was miserably tired of this pointless back and forth… It was impossible to make ground and keep it. A hundred different innuendos rushed through her mind, but she was too sick at heart to even flirt. She wanted to be left alone. She wanted his intoxicating presence _gone_. Cullen stood, his eyes drifting to the book abandoned on the bed. _Take it, I definitely don't want it._ But he let it be, his kilt rustling softly as he departed at a brisk trot. As Cullen rounded the corner of the alcove, Lisette glanced up through her eyelashes and saw him look back at her. He winced.

Lisette pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her face in her hands. Before the tears came, a bitter laugh escaped her throat. _Ha, I guess that makes us even._


End file.
